People are interesting.
Kostos, the owner and manager of our lodgings of last night and the restaurant below it is a case in point. When we walked up yesterday at about 1:00pm, he wondered how we got there so early. He said most people arrive at about 3:00pm. He spoke fairly good English, but even then it was hard to get a straight answer out of him. He turned almost every question and point of a conversation into a joke or turn of phrase. Sally bantered back with him, yet it felt like he didn’t like someone else joking around, as if that was his role and we were to be the straight men. He was fun, but it was hard to get a straight answer out of him.
After he showed us to our room, we rested for a few hours. When we went down to eat, he was gone. We just sat and relaxed. After about 20 minutes he drove up. His demeanor had changed. He was not jovial, more impatient, almost exasperated. It was later in the day and he was tired. You could see it on his face and in his eyes. It was like a different man was running the afternoon shift. Same face, different man.
At the other end of the day, and our hike, we met an older woman in Pelekas. As we walked into town and the town square I was holding my iPhone in my hand like a water witching stick, hoping it would guide me to our AirB&B for night. I had messaged the owner an hour earlier and gotten no reply. If fact, I had received no correspondence whatsoever from her. I had the GPS coordinates marking the spot on my map, but no clue which of the three story stone buildings clustered around the square hide was our lodgings.
Suddenly, to our right an older woman, mid 70’s perhaps (remember friends, some people are older before their time, so the number of years doesn’t equate to age. Outlook on life, health and attitude matter more than number of years.), dressed frumpily, says something in Greek and motions for us to come close to her. Both Sally and I think, “She saw us coming into town looking confused and searching. She is going to try to sell us something, beg for money or coerce us into staying in some room she can rent.” We try to ignore her and continue forward. She presses the issue and takes my arm, leading me forward, again muttering grumpily in Greek. I say, “We already have a room. No thank you.” She insists and keeps trying to lead us further into the square. Still grumpy. No smile. No kind words. A negative countenance to her face.
I bring up AirB&B on my phone and point to the picture of the woman who is renting us the room. She has long blond hair, looks to be in her early 40’s. I tell the old woman, using hand signals and jesters that she doesn’t match the photo on my phone. The old woman grabs my phone, stares at the photo for 10 seconds, then mutters grumpily, “my daughter in law”. Her first and only words of English.
Sally and I decide to follow her, now that she has acknowledged some relationship between us, our B&B and herself.
Once she opens the door and we walk into the place, I look at the pictures on AirB&B and then the room, finding paintings and decorations match up. The grumpy woman gestures and mumbles directions in Greek which we semi understand, all with the attitude of “why do I have to do this? Stupid foreigners.” Then she leaves. What a funny demeanor to have when showing someone to their room for the night. I wish I could understand what she was saying. If the tone matched her words, it would have been a negative string of verbiage.
At midday we walked into the town of Sinirades, hungry for lunch and worried nothing would be open, like yesterday. The first restaurant in town (and the only one for all we knew) had tables out, but their door was closed. As we approached, a van drove up, parked in front blocking half the narrow street and a man and woman started unloading fresh produce from the back, carrying into the restaurant. We asked if they were open. Yes, he replied and we sat down. We were their only customer through our entire meal, not an uncommon occurrence on the this apocalypse vacation.
The waiter, son of the owner and cook, stood on the steps into the restaurant’s front door and talked to us through the entire ordering, waiting for the food, eating and preparing to leave process, about 45-50 minutes. He reminded me of the stereotypical “used car salesman”. Every story, every topic always led to how he could help us, arrange something for us, find out something, etc. He spoke broken English, enough to get by, barely, and with the strong Greek accent it was kind of humorous, although it got tiring after a while. Part of his talk was meant to impress us, part to convince us of his abilities to help us. What he did convince us was we would not be eating here again.
People are interesting.
Today was brutal. It started out easy enough, 1 mile coming down off the ridge where Kostos’ lodgings are, walking on paved roads the whole way. Then a half a mile on undulating roads giving way to a trail that climbed up and descended down as it traversed the bottom slope of a mountain. The trail then turn abruptly upslope and steeply climbed the side of the mountain, to the top. When the trail is perpendicular to the contour lines you know you are in for some steep climbing.
At times the “trail” was steep enough we used our hands to grab the trail surface as we climbed. We topped out a 1000 vertical feet later next to a small church in a clearing with a great view. We sat on the bench by this small cinder block construction to eat a bit.
I climbed on the tile roof of the church to get an unobstructed view of the valley below, took a couple of photos, then climbed back down.
After our break, we started down the other side. Perpendicular trail and contour lines again. Very steep. Hard on the knees. Once down, the walking was nearly level as we covered the 2 1/2 miles to Sinirades and our lunch with the salesman.
Once we left lunch, we walked through the town and realized it was bigger than we thought and everything was open.
The distance to Pelekas, are destination for the night was only 2.5 miles as the crow flys, but this is the Corfu Trail, and like the PCT, it is a scenic trail. This means it doesn’t take the shortest route, it takes whatever route takes you to points of interest or good views. We already had 8 miles down, now we had 4 left. The trail wound out to the coast, doubled back and then began its ascent to this hillside old town.
Leaving Sinirades, Sally was really fatigued. In hindsight we should have ignored the route of the trail and headed straight for Pelekas, but we didn’t, we followed the route of the trail as it twisted around and went up and down in its attempt to show off the beauty of the island and avoid busy roads.
At one point we could see the town up on the hill about 1.5 miles away, but we had to look over our shoulders to see it because the trail was taking us away from it. The last 3/4 of a mile to the town was exhausting for Sally, but she toughed it out and made it to our encounter with the grumpy woman in the town square. Just before entering the town we could look back and see the big mountain we had climbed and descended. Whoa, what a day!
Once in the B&B, I found the WiFi didn’t work. After my encounter with the grumpy woman I was beginning to get a bit grumpy myself. I had looked at the bottom of the WiFi router to get the password. When I lifted it I noticed the DSL line connecting it to the Internet had been ripped from the wall. No wonder the WiFi didn’t work. I called the owner. She at first tried to brush me off, telling me to talk to her mother-in-law. With no verbal communication and a grumpy demeanor, that wasn’t going to work. Then she said her husband would come take a look.
Another half an hour and the problem was resolved,
We relaxed for an hour, then had Gyros on the corner a block from our place. Sally really needed a rest day tomorrow, yet it was our longest hike of the trip, about 18 miles. Earlier in the day, we had concluded that she would take a taxi to our next location and I would hike it. The husband had given us a taxi driver’s phone number. I called and arranged a noon pickup for Sally.
With logistics chores completed the day was complete. A tiring but satisfying day. Tomorrow, Sally will get a rest and I will get a chance to see another section of the island. All is good
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