(Our eight-day Tripology Adventures off-road journey from Athens to Pindos by 4×4 continues from the 7/10, 7/17, 7/24, 7/31, 8/7, 8/14 columns.)
Meteora is a mystical looking place: the UNESCO World Heritage site of six Greek Orthodox monasteries and convents are poised on the plateau of rock pillars that rise 600 meters (about 1800 feet) above the ground, a unique geological formation in Greece.
Early Greeks were mystified by the formations, believing they literally fell “from the sky” – hence the name “meteora”, like “meteor” or “meteorology.”
(In fact, from where I can look up at the formations from our hotel, the Famissi Eden, located just at the base, I can clearly see in stone what looks like a huge Incan man – seated as if on a throne, his arms by his sides. I point it out to Yoav Barashi, our guide, in the hopes this becomes a new myth that the guides pass along to the next group.)
This is the day I have been waiting for. I have had the image of Meteora in my mind since setting out on the Tripology Adventures “Athens to Pindos” 4×4 off-road journey into central Greece (actually, since seeing the monasteries in the James Bond film, “For Your Eyes Only”).
Yoav explains the unique geology of the area: that the valley was once a sea and 60 million years ago, earth movements pushed the seabed upwards. Continuous erosion by water, wind and temperature extremes turned the rock – a mixture of sandstone and conglomerate – into these huge rock pillars, marked by horizontal lines and pocked with caves. This is the only place in Europe where this type of rock material exists.
These cliffs are immensely popular for rock climbers and we see several making their way painstakingly up the vertical pitch, which seems so incongruous to the monastic life Meteora represents. Yoav points to a large horizontal cave in the cliffs: as a token of love, a fellow will climb up to the cave and leave a garment there – mostly they put their football (soccer) shirt. As we pass in our 4×4 Jeeps, we see all the colorful fabrics from the road.
Meteora is the most visited site in Greece after the Acropolis in Athens, and we happen to arrive on probably the busiest tourism day of the year – like Labor Day weekend – and the place is jam-crammed. Parking is an issue.
Out first sight is from across a ravine, and we see a line like ants of people climbing the twisting stone steps to enter the biggest and most important of the monasteries, known as the Great Meteoro.
We get into the line ourselves, walking across a bridge and up the stony staircase, through a dark rock tunnel. Finally we reach the entrance gate where the ladies are handed wraparound skirts, and the fellows in shorts are given pants “for modesty’s sake.”
We meet Dina, the guide Tripology Adventures has arranged to take us through.
The monastery was established in the 1300s, when Athenasios, the monk who came from Prousos monastery (which we visited earlier in our trip), created a community (Prousos apparently wasn’t isolated enough). It was very hard to reach – the early monks had to use rope and ladder to reach the monastery. Athenasios built a chapel at highest point with a few rooms.
In its heyday, in the 1500s, there were 24 monasteries on different rock pillars, and 100 monks resided in the largest one. But the population declined during the Ottoman occupation.
Until 1925, there were no steps – the monks used a basket system to come up – even today, we see a funicular that the monks use to get supplies. European travelers who came in the early 1900s wrote about being lifted in a basket to visit the monastery.
During World War II, the Nazis bombed the town and some of the monasteries were abandoned. The area suffered terribly from 1941 to 1961.
In 1965, the state church opened the monasteries to the public, realizing that tourism was the only way to survive and maintain buildings.
Only three monks live in this monastery today, and it is no longer isolated but easily reached from the town (the chapel is open for Sunday services for local people, and many local people are employed by the monasteries).
“This place feels like home to them,” Dina says. “They have to pray eight hours a day in the chapel, so pray before 9 am when the monastery opens for visitors, and again after they leave. They wake at 4 am. They work – gardening and so forth, but also have hired employees (ticket takers and such). they pray for eight hours, work for eight hours, sleep for eight hours.”
“They keep a balance between tourism and monasticism. Tourism supports the community with jobs and income.”
In all, there are 20 monks and 60 nuns who live among the six structures. They have joint ventures with the neighboring monasteries – the monks and nuns socialize on certain occasions.
Life is easier for the monks and nuns than even 50 years ago – there is a new system for running water (before, they would collect rain water), heat and electricity.
The monasteries are open for anyone to stay. A monk who wants to live here has to practice for four or five years, and if accepted, can stay forever. If they want to go out, they can, but need permission.
We get to see into some of the rooms – an old wine cellar (they still produce wine), and, most creepy, the ossuary where we see the skulls – about 60 or 70 of them – of the original monks from the 1300s, the Holy Fathers of Meteora, neatly arranged on shelves.
Then we are taken into the chapel where there are exquisite paintings, icons and artwork from the 1300s – probably the finest example of Byzantine fresco art remaining in Greece, indeed in all Europe, in such good condition. (The colors are brilliant because they were cleaned 20 years ago.)
The art and architectural features were created by the monks, rather than special artists. Some monks traveled and moved here to create the frescoes. The buildings and artwork were created over about a 50-60 year span. Remarkable.
The artwork all tell similar stories of martyrdom – there are 300 stories depicted in one room. We also see portraits of the two founders, Athensios and the Serbian Prince Iosafa – both have halos.
The small chapel is still used for regular services on Sundays, but exclusively for the local residents, not tourists.
Our plan was to hike down a trail from the monasteries, but there is so much traffic, it takes much longer than we anticipated just to move our SUVs out. Finally, Jessica gets out of Car #4 and directs traffic – ordering a tourist bus coming up this way and another going down that way – to break up the snarl.
We go for lunch at a delightful restaurant in town, then drive to the small village of Elati which is very popular (I can tell) as a hub for hikers. Watching dancing at a local restaurant, a naming party, we are invited to join in.
On our way back, I plead with Yoav to do the hike – if not before dinner then I offer to get up at 5 am to do it before we get underway for our return to Athens the next morning. finally, Yoav says we can do the hike before dinner, and asks if anyone else wants to join, and there are no takers, but as we pull up to the hotel, and he asks again, four others join in. This maneuver requires someone to drive us up the mountain and drive back. And Yoav has another requirement because of the short time: we have to do this without stopping, not even for photos.
We start down – the lighting in the late afternoon is just marvelous, and, the physical exertion and being in the natural environment gives us a close connection to the monks and pilgrims who probably would have taken this trail to visit the monasteries (there is a painting in our hotel lobby that shows just such a scene). The scenes of the rocks turning golden in the light as the sun descends, is unbelievable (I steal some photos). It takes about 30 minutes to get down to the town, and another 15 minutes to walk through the town back to the hotel at the opposite end. We all agree it is a glorious experience.
It’s our last night off-roading in the Pindos Mountains before our caravan of five Jeep SUVs returns to Athens, and we go to a restaurant that turns out to be our favorite of all the marvelous places we have already visited: the Family Gertsou restaurant. It was founded in 1925 by one of the families evicted from the Ottoman Empire and forced to return to Greece (there is a tapestry on the wall that the great-grandmother made more than 100 years ago in Turkey) and there is even a tiny “museum” of sorts with photos and memorabilia, which puts faces to the historical narratives that Yoav has been plying us with throughout our journey.
The restaurant is operated by the third and fourth generations and the food is fantastic – our favorites, a lamb shank braised in wine, and a veal dish (the mother shares her recipe with us when we visit her kitchen: vinegar, dried grapes, tomato paste, braised over a slow fire, covered with flour and water to seal), a pork dish, and an Ambrosia for dessert.
It’s a perfect place for our farewell to central Greece, before we return to Athens.
But we aren’t done. Once again, Yoav invites anyone who wants to come out to a club, and this night, I come along – it isn’t like the touristic places in Athens with traditional Greek rebetiko music, played on bouzouki, but rather, Club Aerino is a modern nightclub. The singers are quite good.
Back to Athens
The next morning, on our way out of the town, we spot signs for a cave, and I wish we would have had time to stop: the Theopetra caves are just 5 km south of Meteora I learn after doing some research on my own that “The dating matches the coldest period of the most recent ice age, indicating that the cavern’s inhabitants built the stone wall to protect themselves from the cold.” Excavated since 1987, the cave is thought to have been inhabited continuously from 50,000 to 5,000 years ago.
We travel back on the highway and after a week of off-roading on mountain roads, it feels odd and anti-climatic to be on such a road, but Yoav makes it interesting. We stop at the site of the Battle of Thermopolis, where the Spartans famously stopped the Persians.
We stop for lunch at Kabal Restaurant on the sea. It’s hard to believe after the sensational meals we have been having, but this restaurant excels, as well – grilled octopus (delectable), calamari (the best so far), fresh fish – grilled sea bream, sea bass with lemon sauce and fried red mullet.
As we pull out of the gas station, Peter White begs for Yoav to tell us a story. (Peter and his wife Annette own the Sugo Trattoria near San Francisco and publish BucketListJourney.net.)
Yoav obliges: “This story begins as it usually does, with Zeus horny, but this time, for a change, got his wife, Hera pregnant…”
‘You Became a Group’
Our return to Athens does not end our journey. After we arrive back at the Alexandros Hotel in Athens, from which we started our off-road journey eight days ago – complete strangers then – we gather together, back in the conference room, to discuss the trip. Now Izhar Gamlieli, who heads Tripology Adventures, asks us to re-introduce ourselves, but tell something different.
“We wanted to see if you became a group. By every measure, you became a group.”
With that, we walk as a group, again, to the metro station, to dinner in the Plaka at the Adrianos Restaurant (it means “Smashing Plates”), which offers traditional rebetiko music. Now we know all about it. Soon Nikos, our lead driver (and an International Road Rally champion) starts dancing, his wife joins him, and others join in.
Tripology Adventures’ 4×4 off-road “Athens to the Pindos” is the best of an independent tour and an organized program. Traveling on your own presents many disadvantages – all the work and preparation, and having to make constant choices of route, accommodations (the best are taken up by tour companies), restaurants. Even if you knew the route that Tripology takes, it would be foolhardy to travel to such remote areas on your own, without having the experience of the road, and without aid if anything goes wrong. In the remote areas we traveled, there aren’t even the western translations of the Greek alphabet on road signs and not a lot of people who speak English (unlike Athens where so many people speak English). We go into mountain villages where there is literally no one home but have a prepared picnic waiting for us.
Tripology Adventures, an Israel-based adventure travel company, has been operating this program for 20 years, but this is the first time it has been offered to Americans, and in the best tradition of travel, it has been enriching and enlightening.
We don’t just come away with a connection to each other, but to the people, and at the end of this trip, I am heartbroken over what the Greeks are experiencing in this economic crisis. After five years of painful austerity, they simply don’t deserve the insecurity and disruption the ineptitude and policies of their leaders and overlords have caused. Tourism has become more important than ever in terms of giving the country anything remotely like a sustainable economy, and in truth, Greece is one of the most fantastic destinations on the planet – visually stunning, fascinating attractions, warm and hospitable people, excellent tourism infrastructure, endless things to see and do. Absolutely exotic and foreign because of the alphabet and language – and yet familiar, as you rediscover the foundational elements for Western civilization.
And as I reflect over the stories that Yoav has told, going back to the myths (always with some terribly tragic ending), to the ancient history and modern history, it all seems worthy of Greek tragedy.
The Tripology 4×4 through Greece is an exceptional program – I have never been on such a well-organized trip. It provides an experience that we couldn’t duplicate on our own, enables us to do things we never thought we could do (and I wasn’t even driving!), brought us to places we likely never would have seen, so we were not only enriched in our understanding and outlook, but in our sense of self – and on top of that, the way the program is organized creates a setting for us to forge new, lasting friendships. But that is the ideal for “travel.”
Seeing how meticulous and well-done this program was, I would go anywhere on the planet with Tripology – I am eyeing their 4×4 programs that reach the Himba tribes in Namibia and cross the dunes in the Moroccan Sahara and to remote areas of Uzbekistan, which feature luxury camping (I’m talking showers and toilets that they transport with them). Itineraries are also available in Turkey, Italy, Pyrenees, and Iceland. Namibia, Morocco, Uzbekistan,
In addition to self-drive 4×4 trips, Tripology organizes trips for private groups, treks, customized tours, family tours, incentive tours (which I think are ideal), plus “concept tours,” which are organized around a special interest or theme, and traveling seminars which revolve around a certain phenomena or topic that we ‘dismantle’ before, during and after the trip.
Departures oriented to American travelers can be seen at www.tripologyadventures.com; more intrepid travelers might like to join a program geared to travelers from all over the world, can visit www.tripology.co.il.
Tripology Adventures, www.tripologyadventures.com, email:info@tripologyadventures.com, or call 888-975-7080 , 720-316-6353.
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