I Hiked the Monks' Stone Paths to the Tops of the Mountains

Thursday, Sept. 15, 2016--Kastraki (Meteora)

I came here to see the monasteries of Meteora--the ones built on top of mountains in this area.  I had no interest in trying to see all of them, since I am not religious and enough becomes enough.  This morning I headed further up the roadway from my guesthouse until I got to the beginning of the stone paths that lead to two of the more popular of the monasteries.  Then I headed up the paths that monks have used for centuries to get to and from them.

My first stop was at the most popular of the monasteries because it is the biggest--the Great Meteoron Monastery (Megalo Meteoro).  It's a long climb to the top, but most of the trail is shaded by trees.  I stopped a couple of times to relax and drink some water.  At one stop, I had a nice visit with a German couple who were climbing the same way with their two children.  Most of the time, the trail was quiet and empty, though.  (Most people today take cars or buses up highways to parking lots that have been built behind the monasteries.)

Even though it is September (after the main tourist season), there were huge crowds at the top--mostly tour groups which are brought here from as far away as Athens each day.  There really isn't a lot to see once there other than the architecture (which is amazing considering the location), the views (which are fantastic, especially toward other mountain-top monasteries), and the frescoes in the chapels (which are like those I have been seeing for weeks now in chapels from the 1300s to 1600s).  What's frustrating, however, is the attitudes and actions of the tour guides.  They think nothing of blocking the entrance to a chapel to talk to their group about it before going inside.  Then they think nothing of closing the door behind their group to keep others from coming in while their group is there.  I purposely maneuvered behind a tour guide at a door and opened the door just to irritate the tour guide inside who had closed it!  I kept it open and stood there looking to see what I wanted to see in the chapel before closing it again.

I went back down about 1/3 of the trail after that and then took a branch that led up to another monastery--Varlaam, the second largest of them all.  It was similar to the first--interesting to see, but more of essentially the same.  A good part of seeing it was that they have built a public restroom beneath the monastery so that I could refill my water bottle before heading back down.

Coming down the old stone pathways is a lot easier than going up.  It wasn't bad at all to return to the bottom of the mountain and then follow the roadway back to my guesthouse.  I had been gone for four hours, so I was a bit tired.  I sat on the balcony of my room facing toward the same mountains I had just climbed, and relaxed reading e-mail, on-line news reports, etc.

In the late afternoon, I walked through Kastraki where my guesthouse is located to Kalabaka, the bigger town below, and bought my bus ticket to Athens on Saturday.  I faced sticker shock!!  The 5-hour trip cost 31.50 Euros--about $36 US!!  That's three times what a ticket of a similar length of time has been costing me elsewhere on this trip--even in Italy!  When I talked with the German family this morning, one of their comments was about how expensive things were here in Greece.  They had expected prices to be cheaper due to the financial problems the country has faced in recent years.  But from what I have read, their financial problems are mostly related to the fact that NOT paying taxes is a common game in Greece. There have been stories from the very beginning of their adoption of the Euro that their prices had jumped to double or triple what they had been before.  Greece hasn't been an inexpensive paradise for years.  Still, the bus ticket seemed unreasonably expensive.

In the evening, I read from my novel on the balcony as the sun was setting.  Inside, I checked TV, but there are no English language channels of interest to me.  I was ready for bed around 22:00.