Southern Peloponnese is the star attraction

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Marjory

Stoupa beach in the Mani

THE Hollywood movie Before Midnight is now doing the rounds with mixed reviews, but one aspect is indisputable – the real star of the piece is the southern Peloponnese.

Focus on this wonderful region of Greece has been long overdue. Having spent three years living in the Mani region (situated in the middle of the three peninsulas), I can vouch for its beauty and real authenticity.

From my experience there, I have drawn up a list of some favourite places to visit, mostly in the Mani. The recommendations for tavernas and other businesses are based on my personal taste alone. Come to the region one day so you can draw up your own list of favourites.

Hillside village of Megali Mantineia

* BEST HILL VILLAGE: Megali Mantineia, in north Mani.

There are many lovely rural villages in the southern Peloponnese but this is my favourite, partly because my partner Jim and I, and our mad Jack Russell dog Wallace, spent the first year of our Greek adventure here and it was the inspiration for my book Things Can Only Get Feta. It’s a short drive from popular Santova beach and nestles on a quiet hillside beneath the north Taygetos Mountains. It’s an unspoilt village with a tight-knit community where most people work as goat farmers or harvest olives.

Unusually for a rural village, there are four very good family-run tavernas here offering traditional dishes. The Lofos (27210 58630), with its vast terrace overlooking the Messinian gulf is on the drive up from the sea; Iliovasilema, or more commonly called Yioryia’s after the owner’s wife (27210 58660), and nearby Sotiris Taverna (27210 58191); Anavriti Taverna (27210 58062), behind the main church, and the Kali Kardia kafeneion in the heart of the village (27210 58306).

Dining experience in Kardamili

* BEST COASTAL VILLAGE: Kardamili

Kardamili is an hour’s drive from Kalamata and is the village where some of Before Midnight was filmed. It has a nice old harbour and pebble beaches. The Taygetos mountains form a picturesque backdrop and there is an historic area with traditional Maniot tower houses. From the village are good walking tracks up to the villages behind, like Agia Sophia and Petrovouni. The late Patrick Leigh Fermor’s house is situated at the southern end beside Kalamitsi beach, with excellent swimming and snorkelling.

Favourite walk: from the old town up to Agia Sophia. Favourite taverna: Hariloas (27210 73373), by the harbour, for its charming owner Maria, and the food, of course. Try the doorstep-sized moussaka, always freshly baked.

Favourite shop: The Bead Shop on the main street of Kardamili (693 9455 365), run by Gill Rochelle. This is a treasure trove of unusual handmade jewellery and a trillion fab beads if you want to get creative while on holiday and make your own. Gill is also very knowledgeable about this area.

Kalogria beach with the house of George Zorbas

* BEST LITERARY CONNECTION: Kalogria beach

Ten minutes further south from Kardamili is the sheltered sandy cove where much of the book Zorba the Greek was conceptualised. Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis spent some time here with the real George Zorbas when they were running a lignite mine nearby (see earlier blog post in November for more details). The beach here, where the writer lived in a wooden hut, now demolished, was also the inspiration for the scene in the book where Zorba teaches the narrator to dance the sirtaki. Stoupa is a close second, a long sandy beach nearby with a good selection of tavernas.

Altomira village in the Taygetos mountains

* BEST LOFTY VILLAGE: Altomira

This is a fabulous village in north Mani at nearly 3,000 ft with a stunning view towards Profitis Ilias, the highest peak in the Taygetos range. The village is partially in ruins, though many Greeks are buying houses and renovating them for summer holidays. The best approach is from the main Kalamata to Stoupa road with the turn-off to Sotirianika, and a 4×4 is recommended.

If you’re a fit, keen walker, there is an old stone kalderimi (donkey track), called the Biliova, from Sotirianika up the side of a hill that will lead you to the village, with great views. You will need to get hold of a local walking map.

Near the Cave of Hades, Cape Tainaron

* BEST SPOOKY SITE: The Cave of Hades

This is situated on Cape Tainaron at the tip of the Mani peninsula. From the end of the road, at the car park, you take the path down to a nearby cove and the cave is behind a high rocky outcrop, covered by bushes. This is the doorway to the Underworld mentioned by ancient writers and scholars. The place where Hercules performed his 12^th labour, dragging out the three-headed dog Cerberus. From here there is a path to some ancient Roman ruins with mosaics and further on is the lighthouse on the southernmost point of Greece.

Favourite taverna: This is on the road down to the fascinating town of Areopolis, and the Cape, at wide Limeni Bay near Otylo. Takis Taverna (27330 51327) is right by the water where fishing boats pull in and land the day’s catch.

Stunning Voidokoilia beach

* BEST BEACH: Voidokoilia

Apart from the long peaceful Santova beach in the Mani, the most perfect, photogenic beach is Voidokoilia, near Navarino Bay on the Messinian peninsula (left-hand prong). Shaped like the Greek letter omega Ω, it has two headlands, one with a ruined Frankish castle on top. The sand here is soft and the water pale and silky. There is nothing much here apart from the beach, so head back towards Pylos town to the fishing village of Yialova with its own sandy beach and a row of nice tavernas and cafes by the water.

View across Kalamata city centre

* BEST CITY: Kalamata

Okay, it’s the only city of the southern Peloponnese, but as Greek cities go, this one is very appealing. Set at the head of the Messinian Gulf, it has the lot: a long clean city beach; history (the historic centre, Frankish castle, cathedral and archaeological museum); a vibrant café scene along Navarino Street; a bustling marina with a selection of tavernas.

Favourite tavernas: Koilakos for fish, especially calamari and grilled octopus, Navarinou St, 12, (27210 22016); the Argo, Salaminos St 52, (27210 25380). Favourite dish, grilled sardines. The other dish is the lovely Adonis, a very entertaining waiter, and a city celebrity. Ta Rolla, Sparta St, 53 (27210 26218). An old-style taverna in the market area of the city with wine barrels full of a lovely local brew and specialties like bean soup and stuffed tomatoes.

Best monastery/silk workshop in Kalamata:

Head to the 18^th century Kalograion (Nuns’) Monastery in Mystra Street (near the Ypapanti Cathedral). Once internationally famous for its silk products, made at the monastery by the nuns, it still produces many lovely items in-house though the nuns number only a couple of dozen these days. The shop here stocks unique hand-printed scarves, embroideries, as well as small icons and religious books.

This is an oasis of calm in the city with a courtyard shaded by orange trees and two small churches. Later, head to the Ypapanti Cathedral to see the ‘miraculous’ icon of the Panagia (Virgin Mary) saved from a fire in the 19^th century during a skirmish with the Turks, and the patroness of this city.

Other places to visit in the southern Peloponnese: the archaeological site of Ancient Messene, north-west of Kalamata, close to the village of Mavromati; Nestor’s Palace, one of the finest Mycenaean sites in southern Greece, near Pylos. The twin “eyes of the Venetian empire” Koroni and sprawling Methoni castles at the tip of the Messinian peninsula; lastly, Monemvasia, Greece’s “rock of Gibraltar” in the Laconian peninsula.

For more information about what to see and do in the southern Peloponnese go to our home page on www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or visit www.mythicalpeloponnese.gr run by the Greek National Tourist Board. A great site for walking tracks in the Mani and other information: www.insidemani.gr

Marjory and Wallace with the new book

A book about living in Greece

For more details about my book, Things Can Only Get Feta (Bene Factum Publishing, London) based on three years living in the Mani, southern Greece during the crisis, visit my website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or visit Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition of the paperback will also be available shortly.

To read my recent story in The Scotsman newspaper about the southern Peloponnese please click on the following link: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/features/travel-mani-delights-in-greece-1-2976801

If you are a resident or frequent visitor to the southern Peloponnese please share your favourite place and tell me what it means to you. Click on ‘comments’ link below

© Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2013

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Finding the real Zorba in the Mani …

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Marjory

Anthony Quinn as Zorba, with Alan Bates, dancing the sirtaki in the 1964 movie

APART from the Parthenon, Nana Mouskouri and blue-domed churches, what image or event totally captures the essence of Greece? For me, it’s the cinematic images of Zorba, played by Anthony Quinn, dancing the sirtaki on the beach to the Mikis Theodorakis’s theme tune – Zorba the Greek. The outrageous, lovably raffish Zorba is the enduring symbol of the nation’s spirit and stoicism. It’s no accident that during the international campaign earlier this year called We Are All Greeks, sympathisers world-wide took to city streets, linked arms and danced the sirtaki in support of Greece.

The character of Alexis Zorbas that Nikos Kazantzakis created 60 years ago in his book The Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas (translated into English as Zorba the Greek) is more than just a literary concoction, however. The real man behind the character was every bit as spirited. Legendary tales about him are kept alive today in an unspoilt corner of the Mani region in the southern Peloponnese.

It was here that Cretan-born Kazantzakis hooked up with Yiorgis (George) Zorbas in 1917 for a peculiar and risky venture in lignite mining that was doomed to failure for many reasons but was nevertheless spun into literary gold a few decades later.

The original small white house at the end of Kalogria beach rented by George Zorbas from a local family

To find out more about the real Zorbas, we set off for the secluded beach of Kalogria, near the village of Stoupa, to meet a young woman called Mary Georgilea, whose family have been closely associated with the Zorbas family for several generations.

She took us to the small renovated house on the beach, built in the late 19^th century by her great–grandfather Andreas Exarchouleas (pictured below) and rented out to George Zorbas when he first came to the Mani to be foreman of the Prastovas mine on a nearby hillside where Kazantzakis had become one of the partners in this venture. This was a time when the Greek government was offering incentives to mine lignite, a precious commodity in the war years.

The beach of Kalogria these days, out of season, is almost as deserted and peaceful as it was when the pair first came here in 1917. The small house with a red pitched roof is one of a pair built on the far right of the beach, not far from the well-known natural spring, the Prinkipa, that bubbles up cold mountain water between the rocks, like a natural plunge pool.

Mary Georgilea in front of Kalogria beach. Her great-grandfather Andreas Exarchouleas (below) rented out the white house to George Zorbas (bottom)

Kazantzakis had chosen to live on the other side of this quiet sandy cove from Zorbas in a simple hut made of wood and bamboo with nothing much inside but a table, chair and a straw-filled mattress. Yet it was here he spent much of 1917/18 writing and reading, leaving the gregarious Zorbas to deal with the lignite business, and village life.

Born in west Macedonia in 1867, Zorbas had worked in various countries as a miner before he came to the Mani, bringing his wife and some of their eight children with him, though they preferred to stay well away, living in the nearby city of Kalamata.

After working hours, Zorbas, then in his fifties, and Kazantzakis, in his thirties, regularly decamped to the shoreline of Kalogria with their supper – often cooked for them by a member of Andreas Exarchouleas’s family – for a long party session, either alone or with whoever had dropped by for the evening, over a few carafes of local wine, and Zorbas would play his bouzouki and sing. In real life, George Zorbas played the bouzouki, not the santouri, as in the book. The pair were famous locally for their rowdy beach soirees, in which they frequently danced along the shoreline, a fact that was immortalised in Kazantzakis’ book.

Stoupa beach, once a tiny fishing village, is now a popular tourist destination in the Mani

Mary, who lives in the nearby village of Stoupa and runs a villa rental business with her mother, was brought up hearing many outlandish stories about Zorbas from her grandfather, Yiorgos Exharchouleas, a well-known local resident. She says Zorbas was a unique character and faithfully captured in Kazantzakis’ book.

She also says that Zorbas and the writer more or less took over Kalogria beach in 1917 and scandalised and delighted Stoupa with their bohemian lifestyle. Stoupa in those days was a small, conservative fishing village with a few tavernas along the seashore and had seen nothing like this pair of outsiders, or their visiting friends – a cast of exotic international characters who descended on Kalogria beach and included famous Greek actors, intellectuals and one of Kazantzakis’ best friends, the poet Angelos Sikelianos.

But while Kazantzakis was a more reclusive and complex character, the locals instantly took to Zorbas’ antics, his bouzouki playing, his kefi (high spirits). Kazantzakis, as in the book, was the total opposite of Zorbas, the cultivated aesthete compared to the rough and ready miner. It was the most unlikely of friendships, yet Kazantzakis has written many times of his admiration and brotherly love for Zorbas.

In another of his books, the autobiographical, Report to Greco, Kazantzakis explains what Zorbas meant to him.

“For he had just what a quill-driver needs for deliverance: the primordial glance which seizes its nourishment arrow-like from on high; the creative artlessness, renewed each morning, which enabled him to see all things constantly as though for the first time, and to bequeath virginity to the eternal quotidian elements of air, ocean fire, woman, and bread; the sureness of hand, freshness of heart, the gallant daring to tease his own soul, as if inside him he had a force superior to the soul…”

To complete the search for the real Zorbas, Maria took us to the abandoned Prastovas area on a Stoupa hillside which has the original lignite mine the pair were involved in. The mine proved unsuccessful and had an early demise and now it is a rather wild and forlorn rabbit warren of tunnels oozing puddles of spring water.

The work at the mine had been hard and dangerous with around 200 workers employed in 1917, some of whom later remarked that while Zorbas was always there working like a mule, Kazantzakis was rarely ever seen, even in the stone ‘office’, that is now a dilapidated old house. He preferred to keep a quiet vigil at the beach hut at Kalogria.

Some of the local Greeks we spoke to about the legendary George Zorbas lamented the disappearance of great characters like him and say the economic crisis has cut the Greek hero down to size. But if ever Greece needed another unique, maverick soul like Zorbas – it’s definitely right now.

Nikos Kazantzakis wrote in Report to Greco of his great admiration for the inimitable George Zorbas

Report to Greco by Nikos Kazantzakis (Faber and Faber) translated by PA Bien.

A book about living in Greece

For more details about my book, Things Can Only Get Feta based on three years living in the Mani, southern Greece during the crisis, visit my website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or visit Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

Visit Amazon to buy the book

For more information about the southern Peloponnese www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

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Southern Peloponnese is the star attraction

A book about living in Greece

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Finding the real Zorba in the Mani …

A book about living in Greece

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