DISCOVERING THE MANI /History, Culture, Beaches, Diros Caves, Vathia, Kardamyli

“When God finished making the world, all He had left were stones and He made the Mani last of all” (from The Flight of the Icarus)

The Mani (or Mani) is marked by towering Mt. Taygetus, which passes through the peninsula from the north to the southern point. Stones form the landscape, in the often abandoned grey stone towers, and the rocky beaches. Coves and bays with a translucent sea lie half hidden from rugged cliffs above.

For centuries the Mani peninsula was separated from the rest of Greece. While the country was under Ottoman occupation, the Maniots were mostly left alone. The Ottomans built a few towers to show who was boss, but that was pretty much it. Instead, the Maniots had their own self-government through local Beys or rulers. Believing they’re descended from the ancient Spartans, they remained pagan for centuries after the rest of the country adopted Christianity. Like the Cretans, they always had tough mountain reputations. And like the Cretans, in Mani they had centuries of blood feuds or vendettas.

Many Cretans actually settled in Mani in the 1600’s to get away from Ottoman persecution. But not only Cretans. Refugees from different parts of the country, attracted by the barrenness and remoteness of the landscape, came to Mani to escape persecution. The area became overpopulated, and the new settlers clashed with the native inhabitants, thus fueling these blood feuds.

In this middle prong or jagged middle tooth of the southern Peloponnese, Mt. Taygetus slices Mani into two parts: the Messinian or “west” or “outer Mani” and the Lakonian (the “east” or “inner or deep mani”)

“Deep Mani” conjures up all sorts of connotations of secrets and remoteness. And indeed to the outside world, the area was known as kakovounia, (bad mountains), or kakovoulia, (the land of evil counsel.) Secrets yes and continuous blood feuds. Houses and stone towers were built to thwart off not only foreign invaders but fellow Maniots, who fought each other for a plot of fertile land in this rocky landscape.

In Mani, Travels in the South Peloponnese by Patrick Leigh Fermor, (well known British travel writer and Cretan resistance hero), he relates that when he first ventured into the “Outer Mani” in the 1950’s, he was told “this isn’t the real Mani…you have to wait till you get to the Deep Mani, the Mesa Mani, south of Areopolis before finding true Maniots…” Leigh Fermor’s book is THE book to get yourself into the Mani mindset, with its cover by British artist and philhellene John Craxton. It might look a little like a Manhattan skyline but those are towers and the fragosyka, the prickly pear, that dots the landscape.

From Athens, there are two ways of approaching Mani, one from the east, from the pretty town of Gytheio, south of Sparta, where neoclassical houses lie along the waterfront. 

The other way into Mani is from the western side, through the also pretty town of Kardamyli.

This year we made the this trip a reality as a family vacation. We stayed in Neo Oitylo or Itilo, across from the long half pebbly, half sandy beach. Oitylo, mentioned by Homer in the Iliad and by travelers of Byzantine times, was the chief city of Mani in the 17th century. The bay is naturally protected from the winds and because it’s long and spread out, it doesn’t feel at all crowded and even has a quiet peaceful feeling. As the kind of border between outer and inner Mani, it’s a good base from which to explore the peninsula.

Mr. George, our host at George’s Seafront Suites, and his wife Mrs. Voula, did their best to make us feel at home. A former Admiral, Mr. George left on the verandah mementoes of his career: a real compass and a tiller, a ship’s wheel.  Of course we had to try it out. 

The view of Neo Oitylo from our large veranda is unbeatable.

The first night I slept outside on the verandah, listening to the lapping of the water on the shore and looking up at the stars, which by the early morning hours, totally blanketed the sky. I didn’t sleep much but I witnessed several shooting stars, a real treat.

Going toward Areopolis, the main town of Mani, you pass by picturesque Limeni, now full of bars and trendy fish restaurants. Areopolis is named for the god Ares (Roman god Mars), the god of war, a name that hardly fits with the pleasant old town with its cobblestone streets, flowers, tiny alleys and restaurants.

You can get a hint of the morea, or mulberry trees, characteristic of the Peloponnese, that look like upside down umbrellas.

The late 18th century church of Taxiarhes has playful reliefs of sun and seals above the arches.

The church was built by the Mavromichaelis family, and sits across from the main square, which today has a statue of Petrobey Mavromichaelis. Mani was the initiator of the 1821 Revolution and Areopolis was the home of the Mavromichalis clan. Petrobey, a fighter, decided Greece had had enough of the Ottoman occupation, and on March 17, 1821, he gathered a group of troops and stormed the garrison in Kalamata, where revolutionary leaders Theodoros Kolokotronis and Mourtzinos were waiting. A few days later, they rose up and the revolution was born.

There’s still a nationalistic spirit with signs of remembering the revolution and the Maniots’ role even on this painted container outside a bakery.

The Maniot symbol was not “freedom or death” as it was in other areas, but “victory “or death” as the residents already had freedom (not being under the Ottoman yoke as noted).

The Mavromichaelis name indeed became part of history but not in a good way. After Petrobey had  a disagreement with later Governor Kapodistrias, the first leader of the free Greece, he was imprisoned  in Nafplion, the first capital of Greece. To avenge the situation, Petrobey’s two nephews assassinated Kapodistrias.  Petrobey, untouched by the murder, returned to Areopolis and lived out his days.

Areopolis is on a plateau, but outside the town as you make the descent to Limeni Bay, you get sweeping sea views.

From Areopolis, we take the road east to the “Deep Mani,” the Lakonian side, to Kotronas. The land, which has been full of olive groves and cypress trees, gradually becomes drier and the landscape more stark. You look up in awe at Mt. Taygetus, mostly dry with green shrubs, but every so often a lone tree up on the mountain and you wonder how it survives. Practically the only vegetation around are stunted olive trees and the fragosyka.

The change is noticeable and certainly not to everyone’s liking. “If you liked the Outer Mani with its green gorges, olive-studded hills and villages of golden-stone,” writes Diana Farr Louis in her article on the Deep Mani, “then perhaps the stark, treeless mountains and the wind hooting through canyons of grey, crumbling towers will not be your cup of tea.”

Here you start to see more of the characteristic Mani signs, the grey stone towers, with just little slits for windows. These were mostly built in fortified villages as protection both from foreign invaders and fellow Greeks. The blood feud was a reality for hundreds of years. There could be plenty of pretexts: even looking too long into the face of someone’s wife or daughter, could be reason for a feud to start, but these were mostly pretexts to get hold of precious land to try to grow something.

Although blood feuds were supposedly outlawed in 1870, Mani traveler in the late 1940’s Kevin Andrews, was warned about them in his guidebook of the time. Even before Leigh Fermor walked, rode a mule and took caiques around Mani in the 50’s, Kevin Andrews was walking around during the years of bloodshed of the Greek Civil War. Andrews had been given a fellowship to study fortresses from the 12^th to 18^th centuries built by Byzantines, Franks, Ottomans, Venetians and Greeks (that he compiled in his book Castles of the Morea, the old name for the Peloponnese, named for the morea tree).

Andrews wrote about his experiences in his book The Flight of the Icarus (unfortunately out of print). He noted, as did Leigh Fermor, that though the Maniots were fierce, their hospitality was unequalled and loyal to the guest (once accepted), something unchanging since ancient times.

Bays and Beaches

The zigzagging roads around the mountain eventually lead us to the village of Kotronas, where we look down to a small organized beach.

We decide to find a couple of other recommended beaches nearby, first, “Chalikia Vata” chalikia (pebbles) and vata, (shrubs). Definitely larger than pebbles! It’s very crowded with families –still August after all –and with tourists and people from nearby villages. The sea feels like a welcome soft caress.

The second beach, Alyppa, is even more beautiful with the sunlight creating part turquoise, part pale green on the sea. But as the beach is smaller, some bathers are spread out on any sort of rock. Parking is a crazy situation. I keep thinking how nice it would be to be here the end of September let’s say, when everyone has returned to school or work. Greeks living abroad have come here in the place of their roots to rest and recharge their batteries.

Refreshed with two swims, we’re ready to face the hairpin turns (our son Theo is doing a great job navigating in our red Smart for 4)

A car is essential for exploring the area. At one time there were buses and boats (and mules) but there doesn’t seem to be any public transportation, as opposed to most other areas of Greece.

The village of Kokkala is off in the distance.

A stop in the mountain village of Lagia to get out of the sun and get a bite to eat seems a good idea. The only taverna in town, it also sells their own honey. It seems whatever you order, they decorate it — we had baked eggplant with feta and zucchini fritters and a Greek salad. Delicious!

We’re on our way to Porto Kagio, whose name comes from the Venetian name for the town, Porto Quaglio, because this is where quails came before flying off to Crete and Africa. Here is a great spot for getting away from the world for a few days. All you need to do is decide which fish taverna you’ll select for that night. Theo, Suzanna and Miltos went exploring on the cliffs and at the end of the path, found this small stone church overlooking the sea with what else, a stone bell tower.

But Elias and I just collapse on the beach. Nearby is Marmaris beach, one of the few sandy beaches. It looks beautiful from the road, but we’re kind of beached out and it’s a long way back to Oitylo.

The following day we have two objectives: the Caves of Diros and Vathia, the traditional settlement, and whatever swims we can have along the way.

Diros Caves

One of the main attractions of Mani is the Caves. Being August, it’s super crowded. Because they give only a limited number of tickets online, you mostly likely need to wait in a physical line to get tickets. And then you need to wait a couple of hours before your number is called to join a group.

To while away the time, we go to the beach under the caves, a typical Mani beach with crystalline sea and large boulders. We’re glad we’ve worn our closed toe plastic shoes, an essential item! On the beach you can hear the loudspeaker announcing numbers in Greek and English. “Everyone with #87,600 to 800, your turn to enter the caves!” We’re 88, 165….

Visitors are sprawled out waiting all over the café, stone steps and passageways.

I get the feeling that the staff are surely waiting for summer to be over to relax a bit! Even after our number is called and we’re waiting with the rest of our group to enter, we wait and wait some more. It takes a little too long for everyone to be fitted with life jackets and positioned in little boats that hold no more than 8 people to explore the lake cave. But here we are, the whole gang finally ready to go!

Going through the subterranean lake cave known as Vlihada or Glyfada, our guide offers little info. “Let me know if you have any questions,” he says, but I would prefer to hear a little more what they have to say first.

The caves were formed millions of years ago. It’s believed some kind of maritime community flourished in the cave around 6000 BC during Neolithic times. The caves were known to locals around 1900 but exploration started in 1949 and opened to the first visitors in 1967.  The caves are actually 14 km in length, but only 1.5 are accessible to the public.

The first part of the visit is 30 minutes or so in little boats that hardly fit in some of the passages. I can understand why the oarsmen are not telling you about the caves as they have to keep saying: “Keep your hands inside,” “don’t touch” and “duck your head.” They must be adept at maneuvering tight corners. (In fact a sign next to where you get tickets writes that the boat part of the cave is prohibited to anyone suffering from claustrophobia!) The stalagmites are under water, but the stalactites, in their different colors and shapes, take your breath away. Some look like delicate filigree or gossamer threads, and others have the appearance of a wax sculpture that only Antonio Gaudi could have designed.

In the widest part of the cave, we’re told that the water, which is half fresh and half salt water, is 40 meters deep (130 feet). When asked if there’s any fish in the boatman tells us “eels that are just passing through.” Meaning that they don’t really stick around and stay in the water. As it’s mostly a silent, eerie ride for us, it’s a little like the boatman-rowing-you-to-Hades feeling. You can see glimpses of other little blue boats in and out of passageways.

When the lake part finishes, now it’s the land cave known as Aleotrypa or “foxhole.” Besides a settlement in Neolithic times, one of the largest in Europe, this area was used for burial and religious purposes. It was abandoned in 3,200 BC but then reused in Mycenean times two thousand years later.

Here’s a good trivia question: what cave in Europe has the largest collection of hippopotamous bones?  And the answer: the Aleotrypa cave in Diros.  Hippopotamous fossils were found from 32,000 years ago, also fossilized bones of panthers, hyenas, lions, ferrets and seals.

As you walk around, you can get more of a close up view of the stalactite formations. You can get an idea of how old they are – supposedly it takes one year for a stalactite to grow 1 cm).  If you put your hand under a stalactite, you can feel the moisture (but don’t touch them).

There’s also a museum with pottery, jewelry and other artifacts found inside the caves. The caves are closed on Monday and hours vary between summer and winter, so best to check that out.

After this amazing visual wonder of the past, we enter the present again, staying along the west coast to Gerolymenas. The road is more level than the east side and the scenery more lush than the east side, with olive groves and cypresses.

Gerolymenas, meaning both “old port,” and “sacred port” was once the main port of Mani. In the past, it sent Maniot goods to Piraeus and Syros and quails to Marseilles. (Sounds poetic!)  Its stone buildings of the 19^th c. are mixed with some ugly neo-Greek concrete buildings, and a hotel of several floors. There’s a slightly desolate feeling here, like what you get when you know a place has seen better days. But we enjoy our swim, with the usual boulders on the beach and the crystal clear sea.

Gerolymenas was also a base for pirates. Making a living as a pirate was definitely more profitable than from agriculture! In 1675, a traveler called the Mani inhabitants “famous pirates by sea and pestilent robbers by land.”

Now on to not-to-be-missed Vatheia or Vathia. It’s a traditional fortified settlement, 180 m. high, from the 18^th, 19^th centuries, of tall stone houses built close together for protection against pirates or Ottomans or other invaders from the sea that’s 2 km away. The houses were also a bit of a status symbol, the taller your tower, the more important your family, and those with power prevented others from building houses taller than theirs. (One of our neighbors, whose roots are in the nearby village of Nimfy, told us proudly that his family owns a tower that’s been in the family for several centuries.)

Some of the stone walls look at least several centuries old, put up by stones piled on top of each other without any kind of sticking material.

By the early 20^th century, the settlement started to be abandoned – residents emigrated to other parts of Greece or abroad. In 1979, only 11 elderly women were left living there, with no electricity. In the 80’s the government, specifically the National Greek Tourist Organization – loaned money to convert towers into guest houses and for a while there was a flurry of renovation, but this didn’t work well for some reason and Vathia went back to being a ghost town. Now there are a couple of guest houses and a hotel, if you’d like to stay in this atmospheric village with its ghosts of the past, overlooking the sea.

As Leigh Fermor wrote, *In summer ghosts are said to roam the Mani in the hottest hour of the day, in winter at the darkest hour of the night.”

Found everywhere are fragosyka, prickly pear cactus, that grow on the roof of abandoned houses, even looking like they grow out of the houses themselves.

Vathia at sunset is magical.

From Vathia, you can go to sandy Marmaris Beach, or continue on to where you leave the car to hike to Cape Tenaro or Matapan, the southernmost spot of mainland Europe, where it’s said that Orpheus and Hercules descended from a cave into Hades. This myth might have a connection with the Diros Caves. I would’ve liked to have done the hike and to visit some fortresses, if it hadn’t taken so many hours to do the caves. Next time!

We actually wanted to get back to enjoy our verandah at dusk.

Mani has some specialties like tomato keftedes, (fritters) popular all over the south Peloponnese, as well as fried peppers. At the Karavopetra Taverna in Neo Oitylo, you can eat dinner sitting right above the sea, looking out at the lights over the water and the moon rising. Perfect setting — you just don’t want to leave. For dessert they bring us another specialty of the area, galatopita (milk pie).

For fish, we went to Limeni to the Kourmas restaurant, again right above the water. Same moon rising. In a fish tank nearby literally hundreds of crayfish were waiting in the water for their fate. We didn’t try the crayfish specialty, but went for shrimp: shrimp saganaki (cooked with peppers, fresh tomatoes and feta), garidomakaronada (spaghetti with shrimp) as well as grilled octopus and fresh kalamari. Mouthwatering all.

After dinner, you can’t resist a walk around the picturesque port of Limeni.   

The final day we headed north to Kardamyli. We passed through (old) Oitylo on the mountain and some small pleasant towns on the way, stopped at a bakery recommended to us in Agion Nikon and we bought lalagitas. Another tasty specialty that goes great with coffee.

Near Kardaymyli, you pass near Stoupa, the only sizeable resort in Mani, with its nice long sandy beach, where we stayed many years ago. This is where Nikos Kazantzakis met the real Alexis Zorbas, who he modelled his character on.

Our host had recommended Foneas Beach (great name, meaning “murderer” – maybe something to do with a pirate’s cove?) You park the car up on the cliffs and you walk down, down, down. A warm strong south wind kept knocking over the umbrella. Rain was on the way.

The second beach we swam at was Kalamitsi, under the house Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor built in the 1960’s to settle near Kardamyli, the village they were so fond of.

Now a museum, it’s open only a couple of hours a week for tours. (Not while we were there).   We walked around a bit, nosily peeking into windows and doors…

Besides a museum, the residence has also been turned into a super luxury hotel – in case you’re interested, I checked the price for Aug. 30 and it came up 693 euros for the night, a discount from 900! (How would Leigh Fermor feel about that, I kept wondering).

The beach was full of cypresses, small pebbles and it was sandy. Lovely after all those rocks!

In his book, Leigh Fermor praised Kardamyli. “It’s like those Elysian confines of the world where Homer says that life is easiest for men; ‘where no snow falls, no strong winds blow nor rain comes down but the melodious west wind blows for ever from the sea to bring coolness to those who live there.'”

Of the village of Kardamyli, with its 490 inhabitants in the 50’s, he wrote, “it is too inaccessible and there is too little to do there, fortunately, for it ever to be seriously endangered by tourism.” Certainly its inaccessibility thanks to Mt. Taygetus, will never turn it into a Mykonos, for sure. But it has become a very popular place to visit and stay with its cute streets and restaurants on the water. There’s no beach in the town but you can dive off the rocks.

It seems that the 1821 Revolution is very much alive, from this sign on a building facade.

Kardamyli, one of the seven cities offered to Achilles by Agamemnon, is also a popular destination for those interested in mountain trekking.

The gateway to/from the Outer Mani, now it’s leading us onward to Kalamata. The road snakes around the mountain and the first drops of rain hit the car window in a fine drizzle. After a welcome visit to a friend in Kalamata, we’re off. It’s about 3 hours back to Athens, not 36 by boat (!) as it was for Kevin Andrews in 1949. Fortunately for us, the storm hits Kalamata after we leave.

As always, there’s so much we didn’t get to, which makes the perfect excuse for another trip. George’s Seafront Suites awaits us…

September began with sorrow: with devastating rains and flooding and destruction, not to mention loss of human life in the region of Thessalia (central Greece). This extreme weather phenomenon followed the terrible heat and fires of the summer.

September is a busy cultural month in Athens, with nightly outdoor concerts and theater, and still outdoor cinemas. Hopefully the rain is over for a little while, so on with the cultural events and still a swim or two…

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.