September 21: Stemnitsa–Dimitsana
12.5 km; 500m (-600m) ascent
Our hostess, Nena, is a culinary genius who supplements her hosting by teaching cooking classes. She filled our table with delicious things that I gobbled up, low-carb diet be damned! Local honey, ubiquitous in Greece, is especially addictive.
Before we could begin our hike, we had to move our car. Nena told us to park it in a bend in the road next to some municipal trash cans.
Today’s hike, Menalon Trail Section 1, took us down the hill from our guesthouse, back through town, and down to the famous Lousios Gorge.
The Lousios Gorge is famous for the monasteries nestled within it. The Prodromos Monastery, built into the very cliff face, is the money-shot for the entire Menalon Trail, widely used on websites.
Many walkers stop to visit the monasteries, but you have to get there before they close for naptime in the early afternoon. I have very mixed feelings about using monastic havens as tourist attractions; neither of us is comfortable intruding on what is supposed to be solitary seclusion. On the other hand… the monks like the tourist €€, and it is their monastery. In any case, we arrived at the Philosophou Monastery on the far side of the gorge after they’d closed their gates for the afternoon, so the point was moot.
We took a break to eat Nena’s packed lunch at a picnic table above the monastery, where we were joined by several monastic cats.
We were still a long way from Dimitsana. The sky, which had been so bright and clear in the morning, turned cloudy. The clouds turned into a steady drizzle.
This section of the Menalon trail ends with a steep climb up to the town of Dimitsana, with walkers routed through the fabulous open-air Water Power Museum. Alas, we were too tired and wet to appreciate it fully. All we wanted was to reach our hotel and shower.
Dimitsana is set up to host thousands of tourists during the short summer season, with several tavernas built on the edge of the hillside to grab the view of the gorge. There are lots of shops selling clothes, jewelry, and trinkets.
We stopped to check out Stratos’s girlfriend’s jewelry shop; she trained at the Stemnitsa school of metalworking and now sells her own creations.
NB: The town’s main road is also the highway through the region, which we drove the previous day to reach Stemnitsa. Our dinner was enlivened by watching cars of various sizes negotiate an alley barely wide enough to pass through. How the cats and dogs survive living here I don’t know.
The rain continued through our sloppy walk into town to find dinner, but cleared up while we ate. This was the last rain we saw in Greece. The rest of September and all of October were dry as dust, so much so that I abandoned my raincoat in Rhodes.
Our hotel room had a feature we’d never seen before: the wifi was attached to the tv. So we couldn’t log onto the Internet without also having the television on. We spent the evening watching a Greek sitcom that I’m pretty sure resembled Friends, along with numerous commercials for pasta and cat food.