{"id":2020,"date":"2010-08-21T11:35:58","date_gmt":"2010-08-21T11:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=2020"},"modified":"2011-04-12T16:44:41","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T16:44:41","slug":"a-difficult-road-to-damouhari-and-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=2020","title":{"rendered":"A difficult road to Damouhari and Paradise!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Made my final descent from the pagoda to Damouhari beach<\/p><\/div>\n

Thursday in Makrinitsa I spent quietly, perhaps\u00a0unknowingly building up courage and strength to help me on the road yesterday.\u00a0 Farewelled\u00a0Hotel Achilles at 0930 hours, purchased a hortopita\u00a0(pastry filled with delicious greens) from the bakery next door, then set off slowly down the road to await my bus, which duly arrived on time at 1045 hours.\u00a0 By 1130 hours\u00a0I was back in the Bus Station of Volos,\u00a0with a temperature of 34 degrees C and a\u00a0two hour wait for the bus to Tsagarada.<\/p>\n

I had not anticipated a journey of such duration, heading firstly down the West coast as far as Kala Nera, then a left turn along another twisting, winding, mountain road through olive groves, apple orchards and forests, eventually arriving in Tsagarada around 1530 hours.\u00a0 Fortunately, I had scored the front seat, meaning\u00a0my eyes could follow the contours of the road\u00a0and this definitely helps equilibrium.\u00a0 With a smoking, talking-on-his-mobile-while-driving ‘species’ of driver, is it any wonder there are a few near misses!<\/p>\n

Tsagarada, where I had intended to stay,\u00a0is made up of four separate areas and very sprawling.\u00a0 I left the bus at Agios Paraskevi where in the Square,\u00a0there is a\u00a01,000 year old plane tree, possibly the oldest in the world.\u00a0\u00a0Not long after my arrival, I spoke with a\u00a0lady, also from\u00a0New\u00a0Zealand, however, she had a very English accent, having left Dunedin some years’ ago.\u00a0 I tried to help her to find where it was she needed to go, however, I figured Anilio was some distance away and that whoever had told her to get off the bus where she did, had completely put her wrong.\u00a0 I hope that she\u00a0eventually made her way to the retreat she was looking for.\u00a0 Gave her my card with website address so if you should be reading this, you may like to email me or leave a comment – I would be interested to hear how you made it to Anilio.<\/p>\n

Loyal readers and followers may remember that at the end of my last blog, I wrote about probably moving on to Tsagarada, with beaches of the Aegean Sea in easy reach (well, they are not) or perhaps to one of those beaches.\u00a0 As\u00a0my\u00a0search for a room in Tsagarada was proving difficult, I saw a sign\u00a0and a walking track to Damouhari.\u00a0 A passerby told me walking there would take me about an hour.\u00a0 I decided I wanted to go there\u00a0and I believed I\u00a0had time.\u00a0 The path was one of those old cobble-stoned ones, great whilst it lasted but unfortunately, as so often seems to have been the case, I arrived at the end with no clear direction of where to from there.\u00a0 I could see the Aegean far, far away, below the mountain and cliffs I was descending, however, with no sign of a settlement or indication of where I should go.\u00a0 So, with visions of sleeping out under a tree or on a beach somewhere, I carried on, eventually sighting a man of whom I asked the question, if I take this dirt road, will it lead me to Damouhari?\u00a0 He was a visitor to the area and did not know.\u00a0 He summoned a lady from the house who bought me a glass of cold water and told me yes, that road will take you to Damouhari, about 15 minutes walk!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Past experience told me it would take me much longer and in fact, it was about 30 minutes before, there in the distance below, the sight of a beach and the village of Damouhari – Eureka! – I had found where I wanted to go.\u00a0 Descending the stone-cobbled path was better than any gym workout.\u00a0 I was feeling so hot, my clothes were wet and the sweat was\u00a0dripping\u00a0from\u00a0my body\u00a0on to the stones.\u00a0 I was thinking to myself, who will want to rent me a room when I am looking\u00a0so dreadful?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Part II “Arrival and first night in Damouhari” to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday in Makrinitsa I spent quietly, perhaps\u00a0unknowingly building up courage and strength to help me on the road yesterday.\u00a0 Farewelled\u00a0Hotel Achilles at 0930 hours, purchased a hortopita\u00a0(pastry filled with delicious greens) from the bakery next door, then set off slowly down the road to await my bus, which duly arrived on time at 1045 hours.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2599,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions\/2599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}