Greece has more hairpin turns than any other place I have ever been. Think of the road to Mt. Baker, the sharp 45 degree turn, up and down and put that in Greece over and over and over again.
We left Gefrya for Gythio. No wonder we never know exactily where we are with such similar names of villages and cities. But Gythio was a small fishing village I wanted to go to. Molly found a CD a young man had given her in Zermatt, Switzerland with four of his own songs on it. Since the radio in the car faded in and out, we started listening to Dylan's CD. We listened to it for about 6 hours in total. Only three songs.....we know them by heart and are now Dylan's number one and number two fans.....
We had lunch in Gythio, found a hotel for the night with a balcony overlooking the water and headed out for a much needed walk around the small town. We found a lighthouse, an old ruin structure, saw lots of fishermen with their catches and had restauranteers calling out to us for business. A handsome greek man approached us and spoke in English, asking, finally if we would have coffee with him later. We agreed.
Mike Zorbas (easy to remember like Zorba the Greek) had recently moved to Gythio from Corinth. He was a teacher and a stranger in the town like us. He knew English from school and proved to be insightful as to Greek life, customs, etc. He also loved music and reading, and we found many commonalities in that. We played backgammon, had coffee and decided to meet him in the morning to go for a hike.
When morning came, so did the rains. It was pouring, so hiking sounding less appealing. Instead, I suggested we drive across the peninsula to the Diros Caves, a famous natural phenomenon. More hairpins, some new music (heavy metal, provided by Mike), some rain, some sun, a fruitstand......we made it to the caves and had fun in the boat where we had to duck almost flat to get under the stalagmites without scalping ourselves. The water in the caves was so clear, you could not tell what was reflection and what was submerged.....the lighting made it magical and the quiet of the drifting boat combined with the dripping rocks was surreal.
We drove back to drop Mike off, had lunch with him first. He confessed his attraction to my daughter, both to her and to me.....we will remember him fondly. We left Gythio and headed to Sparta. It continued to rain, so instead of stopping in a big town known for nothing, we continued driving back to Nafplio for a relaxing evening in a familiar area, where Molly could run in the morning and I could walk. One of the nicest places we had been in Greece.
