AROUND PAROS AGAIN
One more day of adventure. We decided to have breakfast at the harbor at Piso Livadi, the harbor town that I visited with Tom and Caroline in what seems like months ago. One wonderful thing about travel is that when everything is new and unexpected time seems to slow down. In Swannanoa the weekends click by, but in Paros the week that Susie has been here seems like a month and my departure on this trip on October 1 seems like six months ago. Time really is relative, though not for Einstein’s reasons.
Anyway, off we went to Piso Livadi. But Susie wanted to drive on back roads. And it finally dawned on me that not only is Paros almost all back roads but almost all the backroads are rutted, sandy dirt roads that in the United States would be the final road leading up to the farm or a vacation cottage. But here even the most elegant white domed vacation places with high walls and swimming pools were on unmaintained, rutted dirt roads as if the owners were trying to hide out. Greece is old and the shape of the roads is old, meandering around plots of land in zig zag fashion. American roads are straight because they have only been there 100 years and were laid out as straight as possible when built. So we twisted and turned on dirt roads where, when cars wanted to pass, one would find a slightly wider part, pull over and let the other car pass. It also meant that we had very little idea where we were and as we tried to stick close to the coast ran into dead end after dead end and had to back track. As a result we probably drove 50 miles in the five hours that we were on the road wondering if our little Fiat Panda would get shaken apart.
There is a main paved two lane road that runs inland around the island where you can zip along. But our route took us through small town after small town, often only 500 yards apart, towns we had been skipping, only names on direction signs on the highway. But now we curved in and out through the center of little shining white towns with a small square shaded with leaning pines and a big church in the center. I had thought Naousa was special. But one town after another was equally beautiful with narrow lanes with the stones outlined in white and one fairytale house after another. Where I had somehow thought Naousa was built and maintained for tourists I now realized, as I did the day before in Parokia, that every town on the island of Poros has been a beautiful tourist town with narrow winding lanes long before any tourists thought of coming to Poros or any Greek Island. In the United States we often have fake traditional designed by Disney, but in Greece the good taste and marvelous flowers and curving lanes have always been here simply because people like to live this way.
So we wandered through Ampelas and Marmara and Marpissa to Piso Livadi, entranced by each little town. High on a steep mountain peak near Marpissa we could see monastery, St. Antonios Monastery, which seemed to have a road going up the side. We decided to go up as far as we could on the one lane paved road with nothing, not even a low wall, to prevent us from tumbling down the mountain if we made a mistake. The road got steeper and steeper, seeming to be a 45 degrees. If our clutch or brake failed we were doomed. Finally, 100 yards from the top the angle was so steep that we parked and walk up. From there the we could look down on Naousa in one direction and across to the island of Naxos and could see each of the little towns we had passed through with their central churches. And further away we could see Prodromos and the Byzantine trail that we had walked down two days ago. It was exhilaratingly.
And then we drove down, very gingerly, pointed nose down and arrived at the harbor at Piso Livadi where we had a snack. And they were were off through the mountains again on the same narrow rutted very steep roads that we knew now were all over Paros, just ordinary country roads. And this ride was marvelous again.
The day ended with complete confusion with our discovering that ferries from Poros to Athens tomorrow had been cancelled because of high winds. But there is a possibility that another ferry has been rerouted which will take us earlier before the high winds hit. Also Susie found on line that the Blue Star Ferry ticket office will be closed on the weekend so maybe our Greek Island Ferry pass won’t work. We will go to Parokia and find out. It will be another adventure as we head home.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 