The magical bay of Pylos
To the islands? they asked. She replied: No, Peloponnesus. And in her gesture, in her voice, pride and shyness were mixed. She was not an archaeologist, nor a historian, but she was chasing the myths with the fixation of someone who investigates a shady family matter.
We landed in Athens, rented a car and headed to Delphi. Then, as now, the **inland of Greece** was made up of a series of isolated destinations to which cruise passengers and tour-operators dedicated round-trip excursions. Hotels and restaurants were local; the deposits, before and after the departure of the buses, too.
In our first stage we crossed the Mount Parnassus. The road was winding, the villages few. The valley fell, dense and wild, between cypresses, rocky outcrops, oaks and holm oaks. We stopped at a viewpoint sunken in the vegetation and I imagined satyrs and nymphs among the rocks.
The genius of the place manifested itself without shame. She appeared again at Delphi, at sunset, between the columns of the temple, and in Olympia, behind the olive trees whose fruit filled the amphorae of the victors. But it was the genius of Pylos who set our sights.
Pilos, a fishing village full of myths and legends
The road followed the coast of the Ionian sea. Kilometers of virgin beaches followed each other behind the reedbeds. The scarcity of gas stations, of stopovers where one could stop and satisfy one's hunger, aroused a sense of strangeness.
Abstract signs directed to places where ruins loomed out of the bushes. Remains of a pavement, the plinth of a small temple, a wall.
Pilos was a fishing village. The tile houses, whitewashed, surrounded the port. We had booked a room in a hotel overlooking the sea.
The decoration of the entrance included a model of a fishing boat, plaster casts of classical sculptures, rustic plates, clocks with strange times, old photographs and an oil painting of a female nude. The furniture was confusing, but we had a balcony over the bay and the beds were painted blue.
In Pylos the taverns have the furniture painted blue
Beyond the harbor breakwater was the island of ** Sphacteria .** She told me that there, on the Peloponnesian War, Athenian troops besieged four hundred Spartan warriors.
The ships blocked the supplies, but the swimmers managed to overcome the blockade until, after seventy days, The Spartans surrendered for the first time in their history.
I thought that the fire, the triremes, the blood and the screams confused the depth of the water. We chose our stories, and this one did not seduce me.
"The tile houses, whitewashed, surrounded the port"
We dined in the square, surrounded by strong-featured ladies, weather-beaten men, and boys playing ball. The woman who served us did not speak English. She served us fried anchovies and a salad with capers, tomato and cheese. The moment was lukewarm.
The next morning we got up early and headed inland. On the hillside, among olive trees, was the structure that protected the ruins of the Nestor's Palace
She told me about the old man king who accompanied Achilles, Agamemnon and the rest of the Achaean heroes to Troy. His equanimity in that chaos of egos earned him the favor of the gods and a peaceful return home.
"To the islands? No, to the Peloponnese"
The ruins had been dated to the end of the Mycenaean era, in the 13th century B.C. Although nothing proved the link with the character of Homer , literary license had been maintained.
We walked through the hall in which he burned a round fire. Four columns supported the upper floor.
In an enclosure was kept a ceramic bathtub, decorated with spiral motifs. The remains of polychromy on the pavement indicated that everything was brilliant then.
Ceramic bathtub in the Palace of Nestor
On the road to the coast there were signs whose vagueness had an immediate effect on the steering wheel. The archeological sites were grouped by Denomination of Origin.
yes in Boeotia and the Central Peloponnese temples dominated, in the south the indigenous species was the Mycenaean tomb, the tholos circular stone buried in an olive grove.
In each one of them, we stopped in front of the gap that marked the access ramp and we observed with perplexity the remains of a fire or a makeshift sheepfold inside.
The sun was rising and we approached the sea. The shoreline parted in a blue crescent. We parked next to the beach voidokilia . The sand drew a great semicircle.
On a promontory, a watchtower marked the descent towards a cove populated with pine trees.
Mycenaean tomb, or tholos, near the Palace of Nestor
Homer calls it the sandy Pylos, she said. For that reason, and because of its proximity to the palace, historians have assumed that this was the landing point.
It is likely that, as the Odyssey , here it came Telemachus in search of Ulysses. He was accompanied by Athena, the owl-eyed goddess. Nestor offered her wine, a great banquet and a bed next to one of her children.
He told her about the war, of the random return of the warriors, but he knew nothing of his father. At dawn, a bull was sacrificed to the goddess. The Polycaste princess anointed Telemachus with oil before leaving.
We choose our myths, I thought, and jumped into the water.
Voidokilia beach and its characteristic semicircular shape