Exploring Mount Pilio

We arrived this evening in Lamia (just off the main rail line between Athens and Larissa) after 3 beautiful days in Zagora on Mount Pilio Peninsula. We found a beautiful room (room 2 on their website) there with a balcony overlooking the ocean. The room even had a TV and we ended up watching some strange Canadian show about a vampire Cop who went undercover into a cult. But no, we didn't spend all of our time in front of the TV. The area is full of gorgeous orchards (though government studies only give them until the year 2020 to survive because of depleted soil and overuse of pesticides--no wonder there's no Wwoofing here!).

There are old cobbled paths called Kalderimia that wind between the orchards and link the villages. Originally (pre-automobile age) these were the only connections between villages, and they are now starting to be restored and marked as hiking trails. We read in our guidebook that "You'll see yellow metal directional placards with a black walking-man logo--occasionally helpful, more often anything from vague to useless". We soon found out the truth to this as we attempted to hike from Zagora down to Horefto on the coast. On the way down we completely missed a turnoff that there was no sign for and ended up walking the rest of the way partly on the street and partly through people's olive groves.

At the bottom we passed the yellow sign showing the way back up to Zagora so we thought we'd be all set for the way home, but we were wrong. After several wrong turns because there were no signs in sight, fighting our way through thorny bushes, jumping at hissing noises that we thought were snakes but turned out to be water hoses, and thinking we were going to have to spend the night at an abandoned old house, we finally made it back to Zagora just as it turned completely dark. The next day we decided to try the whole thing again in the daylight. This time we found some of the yellow signs (or at least traces of them) that we'd missed the day before. Stay tuned for our Waliking Man series of pictures (unfortunately uploading won't work from here, plus it's super noisy here and we're hungry!)

Today we look the long and scenic way back to Volos by bus, and then another bus to Lamia (actually just to the highway exit to Lamia--that was interesting!) Now we're off to find some good food!