The long road from Spetses to Leonidio
By Helen Grubner. Filed in Uncategorized |
My last image of Costas on Spetses for now
Naturally, I spent my last evening on Spetses in Bar Spetsa. Paddy and Wendy called in to say farewell and Costas and I arranged to meet at 0915 hours for the final time (at least for now anyway) to have coffee together. At 1000 hours I was aboard the ferry boat bound for Kosta – a large degree of sadness as you can all imagine leaving Costas and Spetses behind, however, so many wonderful memories.
A bus to Kranidi just a short distance away where I hopped on another bound for Nafplion, at least that was what I intended. Some two hours or so later, as I was thinking to myself are we ever going to reach there – oops! Realised we were about to cross the Corinth Canal where the motorway to Athens commences and there was no stopping now. At 1400 hours we arrived at the Athens Bus Terminal. Approached the bus driver and asked him in Greek “Do you know what happened? I wanted to go to Nafplion and I didn’t see it. Maybe there was a change of bus to get there?” To which he replied – I shout, I shout, change bus here for Nafplion. You didn’t hear, you sleeping. (Yeh, right – liar)! I said next time you shout louder. His reply “What you do now?” I said I don’t know and walked away from the idiot.
Ventured to find the Ticket Office praying there would be a bus that afternoon to Leonidio. Yes, departing at 1600 hours and the obvious question which I will always ask in future – Do I need to change bus anywhere? In this case, no – we should arrive in Leonidio around 1945 hours. As I passed away the time waiting, I thought to myself, big cities are similar in many ways all around the world. There is always an element of people whose lives appear to be a lost cause. A young boy in the cafe distributing notes which roughly translated to – My mother has epilepsy, my father died from heart, we are five children. Give us one small help for food. Good health you have. Thank you.
And so we left on the 210km journey from Athens to Leonidio, via Corinth, Argos and further south – a winding coastal road which in places literally hugs the mountainside. Unbelievably beautiful – takes one’s breath away. For those of you who are keen enough, take a good look at a map to see where I should have travelled that day and where my journey actually took me. The stupid thing is, Leonidio is on the mainland from where Spetses is actually visible in the distance on a clear day and I had to make such a roundabout trip to get there.
Quickly found a very clean and adequate room for 25 Euro per night (no Internet). I seem to be liked by the Greek people to the same degree of fondness I have for them. My hosts requested I keep quiet about how much they were charging me as another girl there on her own was paying 30 Euro per night. Every time they saw me they would say “Koritsi mas” – our girl.
It was not only I whose day did not exactly go to plan. Costas telephoned at 2045 hours to say he was back in Bar Spetsa. He had got as far as walking the tunnel to board the flight to Munich when it was grounded because of an ash cloud! Oh well, just one of those days.