Land excursions in Paxos
15/05/2013 12:36:33
In the south of the island of Paxosare Kalsionisi and Mongonisi islands. Among Paxos Monginisi and there is a small path that connects Porto Spuzzo with the open sea. It crosses a bridge to reach Mongonisi. From there you have a magnificent view of Antipaxos. On the shore of Porto Spuzzo are the ruins of an ancient Christian church.
If we continue down the road to Porto Gaios, upon a hillwe findthe ruins of another Christian church, Ayos Stefanos, we see that, in what remais of theold building,there are several olive trees. Thefieldnear to the church has a wonderful view to the sea and the nearby coast of Greece.
Continuing north, instead of returning to Porto Gaios, made us find several of the churches that we missed in the recent entry dedicated to the architecture in tne "General Part". Specifically we see Agios Georgios, Agia church Eleusa and ceramic ornaments also mentioned by the Archduke. The tower of Agios Georgios is lower today, trimmed by the neighbors feared if collapsed.
We turn now to the west coast of Paxos in order to observe the great cliffs. We see first the Ortholitos far away. After Cave Creek seals from the same point where the Archduke made his draw. And finally the cliff of Eremiti Bay where we saw a couple of monk seals. We see that the nearest part of the cliff is different. A part collapsed three years ago falling on the sea and on the old stone creek building a new large sandy beach.
If we go north, we find the lighthouse Lakka. This is a new lighthouse that was moved 500 meters to the north, on another hill. The old one fell into the sea due to the collapse of the hill on which was, as we can see in the photo we have taken from the position of the new lighthouse.
We reached Lakka where the turquoise waters welcome us. First we see the tip of Lakka where the mill was mentioned by the Archduke. On the left of the current port area we can see the place that the old boats where tied. We see that the church still exists but has been blocked by new buildings builted there. We then walked towards the area of the beaches, to the left of the bay, and took a photography into the bay.
Going south on the east coast, we find Longo. There stands, as a differentiator, a factory that was built in the early twentieth century and was not there at the time of the Archduke. The funny thing is that now is completely abandoned. In this factory were produced oil, soap and other products.
In Longo we went up to one of the windmills. At the top we realize that it is the mill that drew the Archduke, so we are in the wrong mill but as every cloud has a silver lining, from there now we can see the other mill in which itself was Archduke.
The views from the mill in which we are now to Longo, Corfu and Paxos south coast are breathtaking.
Finally we returned to Porto Gaios and visited the islands of St. Nicolaos of Madonna ( Panagia). We can see first the way up to the castle. During the climb you can see Porto Gaios above the first line of olive trees. Today you can see many pine trees that did not exist at the time of the Archduke. At the end of the climb is a windmill.
We arrived at the castle wall. It is a castle built by the Venetians following Da Vinci´s architectural drawings. Moving down the southern slope we arrive to Ayos Nikolaos church, surrounded by olive trees, as the Archduke showed. We even see three of the Italian pines, although only two are alive.
The Madonna island acts as natural dam for the Port Gaios. We walked to it from the port on the southern part of the island. Just behind the church is the lighthouse. Down again we take the picture from Porto Gaios.
We slowly are finishing this wonderful destination of “Paxos and Antipaxos”. Soon we will begin to send posts from Parga just at opposite coast of Greece...
