saika

Woke up refreshed at the monastery near Nereida. Just the view (see photo of wet grass) was a bit dispiriting. Had been raining for SUCH a long time. I mean, I know we need rain and so on, but couldn`t it stop for a day or so so I could dry my stuff?
Or perhaps its God punishing us, though he did say, Fire the next time. Of course a couple of years ago he DID send fires , to Greece at least, but no one took any notice.So maybe he`s trying floods again.
Just then I looked up, and I saw a bird, some kind of dove, I think. It was carrying something in its beak..I got my bins..it was carrying an olive branch..now why would a dove do that?
Looked at the mountainside where we were supposed to be going.. yes! the rain had stopped enough to see the track..next thing the sun would be out.. well maybe not..I did know exactly how those people on the ark felt though, a break in the grey sky, a shaft of sunlight.. an end to that ceaseless pissing sound of rain falling on wet ground. I emphasised with those old testament persons, something I didn’t really expect ever to be able to do.
Vassili had told me that the way I needed to go would take me to Saika. We looked on my map. We looked on his map. No Saika at all. Another place that has been arbitrarily renamed. The villagers still defiantly think it is called Saika (see photo) and indeed it does exist. Its just that those who know about these things consider Saika to be a Slavic name, and so they renamed it Petralona. As if we don`t already have enough Petralonas.
And so, when you try to find Saika on the map, you can`t. And when you try to find Petralona in the mountains near Agrapha you can`t.
I stayed the night in an empty monastery at Saika, and the next day, set off, as directed by Georgo, a lawyer from Athens, along a small track to a mountain called Niala. And very very very spectacular it was too. Especially at first when I could see it. By lunch time there was thunder, but before we got soaked took refuge in a church high up in the sheep grazing land, called, not surprisingly, Profitis Ilias.
Checked my bins.mmm. lenses a bit grubby. Maybe I was wrong about the olive branch.
So the rain was awful. It paused every now and then, and I thought of making a run for the next village (called Vraigiana. Careful though..there are two of them, and this is the one that the map makes the smaller of the two, even though its full name in Megalo Vraigianna.) However, on the ridge, dimly visible from time to time through the downpour and mist, was where 40 andartes froze to death during the war. As we know andartes were pretty tough. So somehow that ridge seemed very threatening to me. I am used to getting soaked and frozen, and it would only have been for a couple or three hours, but I decided it would be better to wait out the storm in the church.
This nearly wasn`t possible. A shepherd turned up in his Datsun. He had come, he said, to lock the church for the night. I asked him to not lock it, as 40 people had already died of exposure on Niala, and surely he didn`t want to make in 41+ a horse?
He agreed that this wouldn`t be a Christian thing to do. Then I got involved in the kind of conversation that women readers will recognise as being rather scarey.
“We are both grownups” he said, and my heart sank “ tell me, what do you do if men get…no need for me to explain what I mean..”
I wondered how I had got into this conversation and wondered how to get out of it.
After some time I managed to get rid of this person without getting thrown out of the church. But its so annoying and, yes, threatening, when someone who seems like a nice shepherd, turns in to a very dodgy prospect indeed.
The next morning the sun shone and everything was beautiful.
The ridge seemed completely unthreatening. Considerably less of a trial than the shepherd who I had met as a result of being afraid to tackle the ridge.
When we got to the spot where there is a placque in memory of the resistance fighters we met four young men who were attempting to cross the track in a 4X4. They had got out of the car and climbed to the memorial. We got chatting, and they asked why I was walking. I explained that since I hadn`t been able to find corn for George, I felt that he needed to save calories so he wouldn`t lose weight.
I`ve got a packet of biscuits, said one man, helpfully. Well a packet of cream crackers wouldn’t do much for George, but it`d do a lot for me..
“YES!!” I said. The guy still thought the biscuits were for George, and started feeding them to him. “No no give them to ME!!” I said. George got grass to eat, but I haven`t had anything”
So In front of the four young men I ate the packet of biscuits, wrappings and all, in one gulp.
Just then George looked up. A mountaineer walking up to the peak. In the distance 4 others. Niala was getting like Picadilly circus.
The top of the ridge was snowy and the weather started to turn bad. We were well on our way down to Vragianna before it got really bad though.
In Vragianna we got a lovely meadow for George and a fantastic meal for me. Then we went on to Petrilo, where we spent the night.