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| The Chora is actually Serifos, the ancient capital. |
My intention when I started out today was to gain a bit of
altitude on the road to the Chora and sit on a wall somewhere and write. Well, little by little by little, I kept
going and when I was at least halfway, I thought well might as well go for it. The altitude gain from sea level is 585
meters or 1919 feet with the distance of 5 kilometers or 3 miles plus a few
hundred yards. Didn’t seem like
much. Well, HA! Damn near doomed me.
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| The Walkway to Chora |
The path is a mixture of roadway and stair climbing that
takes you past a few churches, past the one room schoolhouse, through the
narrow streets of this ancient place.
There are surely people who live up there and have never come down to
the port. Wind predominates and has the
sense of closing one off from the rest of life.
It reminded me of the wind in the movie “Black Narcissus” with the
howling of it and the buildings clinging to the edge of the cliffs. Some of them appear to be quite unstable.
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| The Schoolhouse |
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| The Walkway to Chora |
Going downhill is far more difficult on the knees. I stopped to rest numerous times, but the
stair climb was relentless. I thought
I’d really have to get to the top to ride the 4:00 p.m. bus back down to
Livadi. The bus ride takes 15
minutes. I stopped in a taverna and had
a lemonade, chatting with the 31 year old handsome Greek who has lived on the
top for 2.5 years. He spoke enough
English, as most people do, to have a simple conversation and share the basic
‘where are you from’ kind of thing.
The minute he looked at me huffing and puffing as I reached the near
top, he immediately handed me a glass of water, and this helped me revive. I never did get to the very top which was
another 100 steps. It would have been
completely foolish and would have tempted fate.
I’ll take the bus up the hill next time, perhaps tomorrow to see the
very top and to see the archeological exhibit. I was the only one walking up although I passed several people who were headed down.
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| A bit precarious with some serious erosion beneath these houses. Trouble is when you get to the top, you don't know whether you are sitting in a taverna that is one of these buildings. Scary!! |
A sweet old man was also waiting at the bus stop and another
man with a donkey came back and forth several times hauling gravel up the
hill. Well, his donkey hauled the
gravel, three buckets on each side of his pack.
I couldn’t photograph it; sometimes it’s just too rude to do so. The old man motioned for me to sit beside him
on the bus and then we made a stop at the school to take the grade school kids
back down to the port.
