so we have not seen any riots because until yesterday we were in the mountain village of monodendri with 150 residents, mostly grandmas and grandpas. as you can imagine they are not the type to attack police or smash store fronts, not that there were any stores in the town anyway (it was tiny). we got to monodendri on the 8th from kalambaka via a 6000ft pass and ioannina. the bus ride was really nice through the mountains with pines trees and firs, deep river valleys with little red-tiled villages climbing up the sides with snow-covered mountains behind. we even saw a ski resort consisting of one rope tow and two runs. in ioannina, i tried to find the tourism office, but instead wandered on side streets asking random greeks for directions and finding only a run down parking garage where the office was supposedly located. while waiting for our bus to monodendri in ioannina we were adopted by three greek grandmas and a grandpa named george who had been an engineer on a ship and traveled through US ports in the 70s. the grandmas had one-sided conversations with us in greek since all we could do was smile, nod, or look confused and george tried his best to translate for us with minimal success. they were so cute and didnt let us out of their site until we got off the bus in monodendri. monodendri itself is a little slate-house village on a hill in the pindos mountains above vikos gorge (the world's steepest gorge). as we were settling into our room and preparing to go out and wander the village, it snowed. didnt stick, but it snowed. we found a great little restaurant that made yummy savory pies, the local specialty and the owner gave us free greek red wine. after dinner we spent the evening watching athens explode on greek television and frantincally worked to translate the names of the athenian neighborhoods being affected. much to our dismay, the hardest hit are the ones with the bus and metro stations we need to get to the airport. uh oh. dont worry we called the embassy today and they are helping us.
on the 9th we tried to hike to the gorge, but got lost in the village and ended up at the agia paraskevi monastery perched precariously on the gorge walls. it was a really pretty place with great views of the gorge, the aoos river and some snowy mountains. we found the way down into the gorge eventually and were greeted with an 1100ft descent in less than a half mile. it was certainly worth it though! the aoos river was the greenest color and it is strewn with huge white boulders covered with bright green moss in places. it was so cold, parts of the river where frozen so there were some cool ice patterns in the shallower pools. the walls of the canyon were basically vertical and 1900ft high in some places. there are lots of iron deposits in the area so they were orangish in places and had a few trees barely holding on. as we hiked through the canyon, the layers of the walls, as tributaries came into the river were so pretty! and some were lit by the sun and some in the shade. parts of the trail were taken out by recent rockslides and just built again right over the rubble. sometimes as we were traversing the slides, rocks would come down from the walls and roll on past us. interesting. some of the walls also had water seeping down them so there were some huge icicles formed on the walls, in caves, and coating some trees below the walls. towards the end of the hike, moss covered everything- the trees that looked like maples and all the round rocks and it looked almost identical to parts of the columbia gorge. we nearly froze to death at lunch so we hiked back to monodendri pretty quickly and wandered through the town for a bit before retiring to our room before dinner. in all we did about 20km that day which was great.
on the 10th we walked past the monastery along a path cut right into the cliff side. there were supposedly a series of cliffs that the monodenrians hid in during various wars, invasions and raids, but the trail ended before we really saw any such thing. the path was great though and the views of the gorge were really nice. after this we descended into the gorge again to head the other direction to a village with stone bridges, but lost the trail as it seemed to go right up the river channel according to the signs on the boulders. the river was about 15ft deep in some places and had thin ice on it so this was not possible. we did find a blue bike and a chimney though. we ended up just playing in the ice for a bit and skipping rocks/moving big boulders and then ate lunch and headed back up to monodendri.
yesterday we caught a bus back to ioannina, then a bus to kalambaka, then a bus to trikala, then a bus to lamia (where we were adopted by two 26 year old female students), then a bus to karpenisi where we are now. i will blog about this area once we have left, but it is really pretty here with lots of fir trees, but we cant see any mountains right now because there are lots of rainy rainy clouds. this is supposed to be the switzerland of greece so we hope it clears off! hope all is well at home. oh i checked my bachelors forecast and basically fell out of my rolly computer chair. snow and lots of it and cold. finally.
