September 24: Nymfasia–Magouliana–Valtesiniko
8.9km; 500m (-140m) ascent; followed by 6.6km; 110m (-220m) ascent. So… 15.5km; 610m (-360m) ascent.
This morning we were literally the only guests at the resort, so no breakfast buffet today. The young man who had helped us yesterday was still working solitary duty. He brought out our breakfast courses to the table one by one, cooking the eggs to order himself.
Today we were scheduled to hike two long sections: Section 6: Nymphasia–Magouliana and Section 7: Magouliana–Valtesiniko. It was going to be a slog.
We started out walking downhill through the town of Nymfasia, which added an extra kilometer to the day’s stage. This morning we actually did see signs of life in the form of a few retirees and their dogs and cats. Or perhaps some cats and dogs and their retirees.
Out of town, we dropped down into another forest, with views of the luxurious-looking Kernitsas Monastery.
We descended to the river, crossed the bridge, and then climbed steeply back up the other bank.
And then, somewhere in the “dense fir forest,” we got off the trail. This seems to have been the result of some confusion with the GPX tracks, but we ended up walking through knee-deep leaf litter on a steep hillside paralleling the plumbing pipes leading between the next monastery and a spring. We climbed over and under downed trees, doing the limbo to avoid the worst of the spiky plants. A trail this was not.
After an hour or more of this nonsense, we finally clambered back onto the actual Menalon Trail, just below the Sfyrida Hermitage. It was a relief, but we were somewhat discouraged by the distance we still had to cover to Magouliana, our mid-way stop. This section was supposed to take 3.5 hours, but we were past that already and still had a good hour to go. And I was demoralized from being overstressed and frightened by too many washed-out exposed bits of trail. And savaged by thorny plants.
We finally caught sight of Magouliana just before 2 pm.
The last bit of trail was basically a 12-foot scramble down to the road, which was seriously irritating.
We had hoped to grab some lunch in Magouliana. Our first glimpse of town wasn’t encouraging; everything was closed. But, Lo! Like an archangel bearing glad tidings, there appeared the distinctive silver hood of a Mercedes, the vehicle of choice of Arkadian taxi drivers.
We flagged the man down, and he agreed to take us to our next stop, the name of which I had fortuitously committed to memory that morning: Valtesiniko.
I have never been so happy to have motorized transport as I was when we actually saw Valtesiniko, which has to be the steepest of the many steep mountain towns we’ve visited. Our guesthouse, Thea Valtesiniko, was at the very top of the hilly settlement.
The footpath down into town itself was nearly vertical. We descended to eat a late lunch at a taverna with many cats and a very cute baby.
To save ourselves the trouble of climbing down and up from the guesthose one more time, we then stopped at a grocery store to get supplies for the evening. Our room had a balcony overlooking the town, and those should never be wasted.
That evening we tried to watch the movie Troy, thinking it would be a good history refresher. It was even dumber than we remembered, so we cut it off at the point at which Achilles raids the temple.