9th September 2006

Preveli and the optimists

ON our first day in Plakias we had purchased a couple of local walking guides, since we wanted to get to Preveli and the we had done very little walking up until that point. The guides seemed very detailed and written by an English bloke, but it transpired that either he was 17 feet tall, or had misjudged kilometre walking times with miles.

We got up early to walk to Preveli via the village of Giangiou which was going to be roughly 8 KM but the walk out of Plakias alone seemed never-ending before we even got onto the Preveli headed road - plus Chala's overpriced at £10 rucksack was doing her and my head in and so after a pointless 1 hour excursion to the petrol station we returned to Plakias and eventually caught the 11AM bus.

We intended to visit Preveli monastery and the beach then get the bus back in the afternoon, however it soon dawned on us that this might not work. The LP mentioned that from the car park there was a " steep path down to the beach " but the fact that the path to the car park had its own bus stop suggested a long walk was afoot.Undeterred, we visited the monastery, where we found out that bringing trousers was completely unnecessary and so there was now extra weight to carry on what was a surprisingly hot day. The monastery was well Worth any journey, with ornate decoration and ornamentation in the chapel and rooms and, almost like tourist utopia, the cutest most pathetic sounding kittens living in the courtyard. However, the fact is the monastery is not that big and try as we might the visit was never going to make the hour mark, let alone the unfeasible gulf in time before the bus back.

We grabbed a bite to eat outside, since someone had taken the sensible step of building a snack bar in the car park, which perhaps in light of the obscene boredom of fluctuating custom ( 50 patrons twice a day ) is understaffed at the times when you leave or before entering. During our wait for food we had wondered if it was possible to follow the path from the car park at the monastery to the beach - on inspection it said no entry and besides which seemed t go nowhere. Now fed up we instead walked the 2 or 3 KM back to the beach bus stop and then for another KM from the stop to the car park and onto the descent to the beach.

After 15 minutes of faltering, fearful tiptoeing it dawned on me that my rubbish eyesight made my balance and sense of perspective life threatening. and that to attempt to climb back up, even with a generous allowance for early busses and dehydration, might actually kill us, always supposing we made it down at all. It was 14.00, we had no cold drinks and the thought of spending less than an hour on the beach before climbing back up the steep slope in searing heat was less than tempting.

In addition, Chala looked like she might keel over , and the only shade we had seem was a disused toilet block, so we trudged disconsolately back up there. We poured warm water on our heads and drank crappy warm pop whilst trying not to pass out from the stench before stage by stage, we trudged off and climbed back to the first bus stop. By 15.20 we were back at the monastery car park snack bar fighting hordes of wasps and drinking rather more than was sensible during two mind numbing hours waiting for the bus back to Plakias.

On returning to civilisation we had a lie down and a shower and paid Nikos for the room, then went out for a fantastic meal at Sofia's - lemon pork and potatoes form the oven served in a tagine. We finished off the night with good beer, cocktails and raki at on the rocks. Preveli beach, it seems, will have to wait until I can see again.......

Next time, Elounda Island and Maria's Kafenion