22 January ’05, Saturday. Paleokastro Castle in Pylos
Thursday was spent at home. Thank God we have plenty of books to read for such days. It rained all day long, but it was nice to just sit back and let it rain with out worrying that you might miss something. Friday, we awoke to bright sunshine, so we immediately jumped out of bed, made it to town for some much needed shopping, and then headed out to see the Gialova Lagoon. This lagoon is a prime bird watching site during the winter, so we wanted to see just what that meant. It was well posted with how the site laid out, so seeing as how we were the only people there, we headed out walking one of the paths through the lagoon. Our destination was the “lookout tower” further into the lagoon. This lagoon covers over 500 hectares (how many acres does that come out to??), and is a temporary home to hundreds of birds. Some of the birds we saw were the flamingos, white and blue egrets, hawks, many types of ducks, and many, many types of smaller birds that I have no idea what they were. Over looking the lagoon, is the large Paleokastro Castle. It sits high on a rugged hill, giving it a formidable natural defensive position. In order to get there, we had to go out a natural spit of land from the mainland, past the lagoon, take a path around the hill, following the shore, and then a steep climb to the castle. The trail was real good until we got about ¾ of the way up, and then it just disappeared into the high grasses. The weather has been just what the grasses and plants have been waiting for, as it has grown so fast and thick, that we had to blaze our own way to the top and into the castle. What made it a little tricky was that the path that we cut and the most logical, was close to a drop off and the unseen rocks we had to walk on or around, were out of our site. Also, there were a lot of nettles just waiting for us to expose our open skin to them. The castle was built by the Franks in the 13th century BC, but like a lot of the other castles, there isn’t much left except the walls, to explore. So, we immediately found a set of stairs leading to the top of the walls, and started our walk around them. A little catch in walking the walls of a 13th century structure, is that sometimes there isn’t much to walk on and it is a long way down on either side. You almost feel like you would rather get down on your hands and knees and move across that particular area, but you don’t want to disappoint your wife with your…“bravery”. After eating our lunch perched high on the wall over looking a wonderful sandy horseshoe bay far below, we headed back down. We still had to see Nesters Cave and there wasn’t a lot of day light left. According to mythology, this is the cave where Hermes hid the cattle he stole from Apollo…well, we definitely wanted to see that… Once we got back to the van, we had to head off in the opposite direction around the hill (Hell, it’s a MOUNTAIN.), across some sand-dunes, and then start climbing the side of the hill through the same high grasses and rocks we had before. Once we came around the last dune, we saw the cave high above us…it was huge. We forged our way to the opening and thank you Louise, we had brought a huge flashlight. This is some cave, and I would bet that it did hold those cattle…fact is, it almost smelled like it (just kidding). It was impressive. Again, it is amazing that here we are, at these fantastic sites, and all by ourselves… Yes, we are traveling in the “winter”, but it is worth it not to fight the crowds. Well, we came back to camp tired little “puppies”… Tomorrow, The Palace of Nester and on to Ancient Olympia….
Thursday was spent at home. Thank God we have plenty of books to read for such days. It rained all day long, but it was nice to just sit back and let it rain with out worrying that you might miss something. Friday, we awoke to bright sunshine, so we immediately jumped out of bed, made it to town for some much needed shopping, and then headed out to see the Gialova Lagoon. This lagoon is a prime bird watching site during the winter, so we wanted to see just what that meant. It was well posted with how the site laid out, so seeing as how we were the only people there, we headed out walking one of the paths through the lagoon. Our destination was the “lookout tower” further into the lagoon. This lagoon covers over 500 hectares (how many acres does that come out to??), and is a temporary home to hundreds of birds. Some of the birds we saw were the flamingos, white and blue egrets, hawks, many types of ducks, and many, many types of smaller birds that I have no idea what they were. Over looking the lagoon, is the large Paleokastro Castle. It sits high on a rugged hill, giving it a formidable natural defensive position. In order to get there, we had to go out a natural spit of land from the mainland, past the lagoon, take a path around the hill, following the shore, and then a steep climb to the castle. The trail was real good until we got about ¾ of the way up, and then it just disappeared into the high grasses. The weather has been just what the grasses and plants have been waiting for, as it has grown so fast and thick, that we had to blaze our own way to the top and into the castle. What made it a little tricky was that the path that we cut and the most logical, was close to a drop off and the unseen rocks we had to walk on or around, were out of our site. Also, there were a lot of nettles just waiting for us to expose our open skin to them. The castle was built by the Franks in the 13th century BC, but like a lot of the other castles, there isn’t much left except the walls, to explore. So, we immediately found a set of stairs leading to the top of the walls, and started our walk around them. A little catch in walking the walls of a 13th century structure, is that sometimes there isn’t much to walk on and it is a long way down on either side. You almost feel like you would rather get down on your hands and knees and move across that particular area, but you don’t want to disappoint your wife with your…“bravery”. After eating our lunch perched high on the wall over looking a wonderful sandy horseshoe bay far below, we headed back down. We still had to see Nesters Cave and there wasn’t a lot of day light left. According to mythology, this is the cave where Hermes hid the cattle he stole from Apollo…well, we definitely wanted to see that… Once we got back to the van, we had to head off in the opposite direction around the hill (Hell, it’s a MOUNTAIN.), across some sand-dunes, and then start climbing the side of the hill through the same high grasses and rocks we had before. Once we came around the last dune, we saw the cave high above us…it was huge. We forged our way to the opening and thank you Louise, we had brought a huge flashlight. This is some cave, and I would bet that it did hold those cattle…fact is, it almost smelled like it (just kidding). It was impressive. Again, it is amazing that here we are, at these fantastic sites, and all by ourselves… Yes, we are traveling in the “winter”, but it is worth it not to fight the crowds. Well, we came back to camp tired little “puppies”… Tomorrow, The Palace of Nester and on to Ancient Olympia….