Zante / Zakhyntos

Today rather than explain the outcome of our investigations, as usual, we will describe the journey that has taken place on this occasion. If the other day we explained the cognitive process which takes place over several days, today we will show the adventures that we should live every day.

We start this tour by taking the main road of the island to the north. Halfway we stopped at Skulikado, a place the Archduke drew the bell tower of the church. We see the houses which were located right next to the church are gone.

   

We continue until Katastari in order to find the church of Ayos Theodoros. It is not easy to find because, as has been common in Greece, the signs are missing and, when we see them, they can be quite confusing. In the end, after trying several ways, we got it.

 The church is on a hill from where you have great views over the bay of Alykes, to the Skopos and also to the south along the west mountain range of the island.

   

We continue north and take the detour to Orthonies to finally reach Volimes area. Once in Volimes the adventure begins. We have to find a number of churches and monasteries, with high probability they will not be marked and the roads are unpaved and dirt...

We decided to start with Ayos Andreas; so we must take several dirt roads before come upon a small church: it is the monastery of Taxiarches! That was not the one we were looking for, but obviously we are happy with our discovery.

We keep on looking and found nothing; tired we decided to take a paved road leading to beach Selima. On the way we see the small island of Ayos Andreas. We descend to the beach and realize that it has to be the one that the Archduke called Sparto.

   

The path which is really well signposted is the one to "Shipreck Bay"... There's a significant line of tourists on the veranda, so we decided to go along the coast to take a picture of the stranded boat from above. From there we also have a good view towards Cape Plemonari and the bay where we saw multiple arches and pierced caves on our previous excursion by sea.

   

We forget Ayos Andreas and returned back in order to find Ayos Georgios. We entered another way and after several kilometers is cut by a fallen tree, back again! We go along another dirt road and after several miles and several additional adventures we find the monastery. However, we have doubts because we do not see the round tower that characterizes Ayos Georgios. Big surprise!, we are in Ayos Andreas. The funny thing is that we did not realize until we left the place and review all our papers. From Ayos Andreas you can get a good view of the little island, as reflected the Archduke in another of his drawings.

   

We go back to the road, heading to Porto Vromi, assuming we won't find Ayos Georgios. Interestingly, after the detour to Shipreck Bay, where we had been before, we ran into a tower... is Ayos Georgios! It is closed but after explaining that we are conducting a study they let us in. Before we get to see how they feed four horses.

We continue to Porto Vromi and from the road we can see the island of Vromi. We also take a photograph to the north coast from the road. By chance, already back in the boat, we see that the image coincides with an engraving of the Archduke that we had not included in our materials and which he identified as "Psachu". Shortly after that we see Porto Vromi in front of us.

   

On the way back we stopped at the monastery of Anafronitia that has been restored and is perfectly maintained, as the Ayos Georgios one.

We continue north to reach the Spiliotissa monastery. It is closed, no one in the place... We seek the cave in which the Virgin was found without any success. Finally, looking at the horizon, we recognize the rocks of the cave on the opposite hillside.

   

We go back to the south and before reaching Katastari we have wonderful views to the north of the east coast. We "make a zoom" to focus the south towards the tips of Stu Psaru, Gaidaro, etc... same places that we saw a few days ago from the sea.

   

Finally we reached the area where the Ayos Yoannis Prodomos monastery is indeed, but indicated in Greek alphabet...

   

So far this adventure through northern Zakhyntos. We hope you've liked the description of the route and its contingencies. In any case, do not panic! we do not always get to do a tour with this surreal characteristics as the one just described...

Comenta la entrada