Dean Christakos« South of Sparta | Main | Travel Peparations »
June 1, 2006
Last couple of days at Mt. Athos
So, when I woke up the next day at Dochiariou monastery, I decided to head over to Karakalou, which is on the southeastern end of Athos peninsula, on the opposite end from my current location. This meant that I needed to hop on a water taxi to the port of Daphi, further down the west coast of the peninsula and then catch a bus to Karyes, on the other side of some steep hills that divide the western coast of Mt. Athos from the center and eastern coast. Karyes is the closest that Mt. Athos has to a "town." Basically, it's a transportation hub and a place that people can stop to pick up supplies at local stores. Here, we can see some monks and pilrgims waiting for a ride to their next destination, having just disembarked from the bus that came from Daphni:
Some of the store owners have pretty tough lives-- one of them I met had a store in Daphni and lived there 20 days out of the month. Like being a truck driver or in the military, it's something that keeps you away from your family for a pretty long time.
Up until the mid-90s, the only way to get around Mt. Athos for the average visitor was by foot or by renting a mule. Now, however, there's a pretty extensive system of taxis and shuttlebuses, some of which are run by the monasteries themselves. From Karyes, I was able to grab a shuttle over to Karakalou.
More pictures and chronicles after the jump...
As one can see from the above picture, there's a lot of construction going on here. Karakalou was an interesting place with an active group of pilgrims who came to visit the place regularly to bring back supplies from Greece and help out with cooking and cleaning at the monastery.
One monk I met had come there from Arkansas about 8 years ago and lived at Karakalou ever since. Another, from a village near Sparta, let me in to the museum they're constructing, where I got to see their collection of medieval icons and vellum books in their library.
A (relatively) quick walk from Karakalou is Philotheou monastery. The path was impressive in that there was an effort to pave part of it:
Along the way, I stopped at a small spring which was near a chapel of St. George:
I decided to stop by an visit Philotheou for a little bit, which is another impressive looking monastery:
The more inland monasteries, as opposed to those on the coast, seem to have more extensive "lookout" facilities, perhaps because the coastal monasteries were already well-positioned to check for pirates from a distance.
This was Saturday, and liturgy was on Sunday morning. Church services start at 3 AM Sunday morning and last until 8 or 9. I decided to "sleep in" (if you can call it that) until 6. That afternoon, the monks pretty much had the rest of the day off, and seeing as how they had been up since 3 in the morning, they spent the afternoon asleep, while the rest of us pilgrims waited for a shuttlebus ride back to Daphni in time for the 12pm ferry back to Ouranopolis. I ended up getting a ride back to Thessaloniki with a couple of other young guys, one of whom makes regular visits to Karakalou and another who runs a store at Daphni.
And that was that. I stayed in Thessaloniki that night and caught a bus down to Athens the following afternoon. That concludes my travels in northern Greece, which lasted from May 20th to May 29th.
Posted by Dean at June 1, 2006 4:56 AM
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