Sunday 11th May 2008

Rain woke us in the early morning. We were parked under a large tree and this is bad news when it rains. If there is continuous light rain and the van is in the open, the effect is quite pleasant and it is easy to sleep through it. However under trees, the water collects on the leaves and then comes off in much larger drops, making loud, irregular noises that are much more difficult to sleep through. With large trees the large drops have further to fall and are even louder when they hit Henrietta's roof. The moral of the story is not to park under trees if it is likely to rain. It rained for five or six hours and it was only just before we left, at 10:00 that it stopped.
We had already decided last night that we would visit the Cave Lakes on the way to Kalavrita and, given the weather, it was a good decision. We were very high up in the mountains, the outside temperature was only about 10°C and we saw that the rain that had fallen in Planiterio had fallen as snow only a little higher. We had our own personal tour of the caves as we were the only people there, which was very useful as the guide attempted to explain things in his very limited English. We in turn helped him with a few English words and terms. The cave was quite impressive being 2 km long and on three levels. Only the 500m long second level is open to the public and there are no plans to open the third despite the fact that our old guidebook suggested that they intended to open it in 2000. The guide explained that there is very little airflow in that part of the cave and the the oxygen would not be sufficient for groups to be taken around. The second level has three lakes that are full in January, February and March when Winter rainfall and snow melt find their way into the cave. Small waterfalls join the lakes, running over the formations on the floor of the cave. In the Summer the cave is dry and when we visited, there was still some water in the lakes although they were not full and there were no waterfalls. The two most impressive things were the huge curtain stalactites, some of which had taken one million years to form, and the bats. Over 5,000 bats live in the caves and we were lucky enough to see some of them flying around and also a roost containing a few hundred and making a huge din as we passed directly underneath.
We had intended to stop in Kalavrita but decided against it given the weather, so we carried on beside the railway until we got close to Mega Spileou. Here we stopped for lunch with the monastery high up in the cliff in front of us and fantastic views up and down the gorge.
We then drove on to our campsite, a return visit to Camping Akrata Beach where we had stayed at no charge in mid-April. We were greeted by Manoli again and took up position by the newly-painted gates onto the beach. We met up with Pat and Sandy, the two American ladies and discovered that they had painted the gates – Manoli explained that they really wanted to help him. We then had a long chat with Pat, Sandy and Manoli exchanging news since we last saw them and putting the world to rights. Manoli explained that there is currently a strike of truck drivers, including fuel tanker drivers, protesting about the cost of fuel. This is beginning to lead to a shortage of fuel in some area, especially in Athens where there are long queues at fuel stations. We saw no sign of queues over the last few days and had no problem getting diesel, so we hope that we will be OK out in the countryside!
Photos: The trout ponds in front of 'O Planiterios'; Curtain stalactites at the Cave Lakes; Tiny ponds created by evaporating water on rocks in the Cave Lakes; The site of Mega Spileou as seen from our picnic spot.