15th June 1984 - Still on Ithika

Friday 15^th June  After I packed I went down to the beach but it was too breezy to swim so I read about Theseus. I then went back to get my stuff and go down to the harbor where I chatted with the Margate ladies – I think their names are Dora and Ann – and Warren came along later. After about 1½ hours I started on my way up the bendy concrete road and arrived in Frikes just in time to catch the bus, which was unexpectedly there, taking the English couple with their baby Amy and her nanny and another couple up the hill to Stavros. Way down below in the bay you can sometimes see an ancient city underneath the water (or so they say).

A View of Vathi or Vathy or however you want to spell Vathi in English.

   Arrived in Vathi about 2.30, siesta time, but I had some lunch and left my pack outside the tourist office and walked back up the road to a turn-off that had a sign saying “Nimfis Cave”. I walked along a windy dirt road that’s very good considering it just leads to the cave (and small olive farmers’ houses on the way). The cave entrance is surrounded by cypress trees and yellow signs and there is a yellow stair ladder inside. This leads down to a cavern which is lit by a hole in the lofty roof, but you still need a torch anyway. I think it’s limestone, there are fluted bits like in limestone caves and he beginnings of stalagmites on the floor, but they’re covered in dirt and there isn’t any water there anyway.

   Coming out of the cave I followed a blue-arrowed route over the top of the hill to the Vathi side. This was supposed to lead to another cave with bas-relief animal carvings, [One of these caves was reputedly where Odysseus hid after returning to Ithaca. However, a more recent theory suggests that Homer’s Ithaca was actually the once see-girt peninsular Paliki on Kephalonia] but after an unmarked fork in the path, I kept going down until I reached Vathi. I sat around the square for a while and went back to Tsoulah’s place when she was there (about 6 o’clock). I had a shower and went out again, bought a ticket to Patras and some food, then watched the Argostoli come in. Wrote a couple of postcards, went to bed, read. [More postcards? I remember that if I found a postcard with a barrel in the picture, I’d send it to John and Alison Bleyerveen.]