September 22: Dimitsana–Zygovisti–Elati
4.2km; 200m (-50m) ascent; followed by 14.9km 420m (-320m) ascent. So… 19.1km; 470m (-370m) ascent.
Today we did two official sections of the Menalon Trail: Section 2: Dimitsana to Zygovisti and Section 3: Zygosti to Elati.
Remember I said that the sections of the Menalon Trail are not all the same length? That was clear today. It takes about two hours to walk from Dimitsana to Zygovisti—hardly worth ending a day’s hike there. But continuing on to Elati makes the hike substantial indeed. There was also the matter of Elati not having much in the way of accommodation, which meant we had to stay in Nymphasia, the end of Section 5. We left the hotel as early as possible to be sure of making our 5:00 p.m. pickup.
But! It was a gorgeous day! The air was clear after the previous evening’s rain and the sun shone bright when it climbed up over the mountains.
We walked up through Dimitsana and over the first mountain of the day.
It was walnut-whacking season. Everywhere in Arcadia, old men were out in their walnut groves using long sticks to knock the walnuts out of the trees.
We strolled into the outskirts of Zygovisti around 10 a.m., where we were waylaid by the old man who runs a taverna of sorts right next to the trail. He welcomed us with his own fresh walnuts, which he could crack one-handed, and ice creams to go with our (very cheap) espressos. The town itself has a couple of more-developed tavernas, but this guy probably catches lots of hikers with his strategic position on the trail just before town.
Then it was onward and upward (lots of upward!) for the much longer stage to Elati. I really loved this walk, which was very much a walk in the woods.
We kept seeing those bright yellow crocuses, along with some white ones. Crocuses are supposed to bloom in the early spring….
Longer walks can be a slog. There’s usually nothing for it but to keep going; Greek trails don’t exactly have a lot of outs; the way “out” is “forward”. The distance markers on the Menalon Trail tend to be quite accurate, which can be demoralizing.
Remember, we needed to be in Elati at 5:00. I predicted an easy arrival at 3:45, though Chris was pessimistic. But by 3:40, we could hear music from a plateia that we couldn’t yet see. Though we didn’t make 3:45, 4:00 was no problem.
We spent our last hour sitting at the one taverna, eating pizza and drinking lemonade. Our driver, Panogiottis, arrived in his silver Mercedes at 5:00 on the dot and whisked us up the road to Nymphasia Resort.
This resort is lovely, and it has a beautiful pool, but in the off season we were almost the only guests that night. The resort is located on the main highway, not in the town of Nymfasia, so we couldn’t realistically walk to a local place for dinner. (Also, there weren’t any local places, but we didn’t know that yet.) We went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner, and discovered that we were actually ordering from the resort’s sister restaurant in the town of Vytina. Greek DoorDash, essentially.