When God Throws You Her Car Keys… Road Trip Round the Peloponnese

When I started musing about another trip around The Peloponnese Peninsula in Greece, I wanted to present myself with a challenge.

This time it wouldn’t be to survive a solo bike trip through the dog-patrolled sheep paddocks of the Parnonas mountains, it would be to make sense of Greek mythology and its place in history.

In contrast to the solemnity of monotheism and ‘God’ with a capital, the Greek deities, so closely modelled on human archetypes and all their flaws, seem like a cosmic joke.

Philandering Zeus, hard-hearted Apollo, humourless Hera, spiteful Athena; how did these characters become worthy of worship? And with their frequent mingling with mere mortals, how do you keep track of the ever expanding pantheon?

So, with this melange of gods to come to terms with, I welcomed the chance to experience “Pelop’s Island” once again, but this time with the luxury of a rented car and a seasoned travel companion.

We start in Napflio, the former capital of Greece, and once a Venetian stronghold. But fortresses and castles aren’t the only relics we want to see – we know that just a short jaunt away lays the legendary ruin of Epidauros.

Most people don’t get past the perfect-in-every-way 20,000 seat theatre close to the entrance of this complex to realize that Epidauros is essentially a mammoth shrine to Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine.

After the Athenian plague in 430 BCE, Epidauros became the go-to place for the thousands of infirm, crippled, deaf and blind who were quite sure Asclepius could make them whole again.

After the required night in the enkoimeterion where they might incubate their own powers of healing, Asclepius would arrive to them in a dream sprinkling those final bits of fairy dust.

The fact that healing required an element of effort and self-examination on the supplicant’s part suggests the Greek gods were wise to the real source of most of our ailments – ourselves! I am warming up to them….

We weave down the serpentine road high above the Argolic Gulf to get to Monemvasia, one of the most beguiling towns of Greece, on the south-east coast of the Peloponnese. Cobblestone streets huddle against the steep sides of the rock, stone buildings interweave with archways, overhangs, dovecots, and bougainvillea empty into squares luminescent with light. 

You access the upper reaches of town by a path that zigzags up the mountain and peaks at the Kastro and the beautiful Byzantine church of Agia Sofia.

While Monemvasia was significant as a trading centre among the Franks, Venetians and Ottomans, no doubt it is a place steeped in story — stories of the fallen and the victorious, the lost and the shipwrecked, and those who had been lucky enough to call Monemvasia home!

If coastal Monemvasia was a centre of trade and commerce, the medieval city of Mystra, three hours inland by car, was the western most centre of Byzantine worship and learning.

Today, terraced on the side of Taygetus mountains, the spectacular remains of Mystra read like the Samarkands of Central Asia and the Middle East, where the holy madrasas drew scholars from every corner of the continent.

Stone passageways connect one monastery to another, with majestic octagonal-domed churches presiding over the courtyards of each monastic complex. Adjoining gardens, orchards, vineyards and animal pens ensured the community’s self-sufficiency and a hill-top castle its security.

And then The Mani – the mythical, nothing-but-mountains peninsula at the southern tip of Greece. Mani crests at the peak of the Taygetus mountains and plunges steeply to the sea below.

As the road spirals upward from the sun-sparkled waters of the Laconian Gulf, we wend past tower houses that stand tacit and austere on the cliffs above, and through villages whose only purchase to steep hillsides are the bowers of bougainvillea they are entangled within.

We emerge from each dip into the cool green of the villages to views incandescent with sea and sky. 

After a dip into the southernmost point of The Mani – and Europe – to seek out the rumoured lair of Hades, the god of the underworld, real legends spirit us up the western side of the Mani.

They bring us first to Vathi, a huddle of tower houses, home to the instigators and heroes of the revolution against the Ottomans in 1820, and then to boutique Kardimyli, the other epicentre of the feared Maniots.

A series of kathimerini, now popular hiking trails, lead to the cluster of towers that loom above Kardymili, and we walk to one that had belonged to a captain in the Greek revolution.

Given that the Maniots were considered descendants of the ancient Spartans, it’s no surprise to find the Mourtzinos Tower equipped for the long run. Cisterns, vegetable garden, wine press, forge and olive mill all lie tight as a drum behind the fortress walls. 

A longer lineage of celebrated heroes await us at Olympia, home of the first Olympic Games. This legendary site is a big deal: one moment it’s just you and a tractor on the tucked away country roads in this northwestern corner of the Peloponnese, the next moment a fleet of tour buses is bearing down on you.

Forewarned, we make a point of being first through the turnstile of this World Heritage site the next morning.

Truly a sacred site, nothing but copses of trees, gentle rolling terraces, and stone-strewn fields distract you from your communion with the elemental forces of nature and the gods.

Getting friendly with Zeus, Hera, Rea, and Hestia et al had its advantages, especially when one’s athletic success was at  stake. Once propitiations had been made, competing athletes continued on to the reckoning that awaited them in the stadium.

Today, challenging your travelmates to a 400-metre dash, imagining the roaring crowds around you, tops many people’s visit to the famed site.

As we return the car in Napflio, I recall the words of travel writer Jeff Greenwald: “Every time I see out on a journey, I feel like God has just thrown me the keys to her car,” and how perfectly they describe our road trip round the Peloponnese.

She flung wide the door to those places dipped in magic and legend, and let us park awhile so I had time to untangle the threads about gods, demi-gods, heroes, and history. From what I gleaned, there was a fluidity between them all, making the task of determining who was a god and who wasn’t and what purpose they served, always an elusive goal.

Ultimately, my confusion about the Greek gods, she assures me, could be as much a sign of knowledge, as it was a lack of it!

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