Ancient Ruins, Classical & human
03 June 2009
Itea is an example of a common Greek phenomenon, the half-finished marina. These crop up all over the place. After an initial burst of enthusiasm there is a flurry of activity - pontoons are manufactured and installed to heavy mooring blocks and great plans made for ancillary facilities such as toilets, restaurants, chandlers etc (q.v. Mossolonghi). Unfortunately, soon after this the enthusiasm (and, it is scurrilously rumoured, the EU funding) run out and everything grinds to a halt. Itea has been like this for the last 7 years. The pontoons are installed and there is the occasional bollard to tie up to, but very little else - no water, electricity, lazy lines, toilets/showers - anything.
At this point, ownership is unclear, and charges are rarely, if ever, levied. And so the pack of marine opportunists, that have been circling watchfully, strike. It may not have any facilities, but there's excellent shelter and by God it's free. It fills up with boats in nanoseconds. Locals mainly, leisure and fishing, followed by skint liveaboards and other ne'er do wells, and finally by tightfisted cruising yotties (which is most of them).
There was, however, a very sociable local who came along the quays thrice daily in his little diesel delivery truck. The local mayor had charged him with supplying diesel, information and access to a water supply to visiting boats. He gave us the low-down on getting to Delphi by bus. We decided to catch the 7:15 bus the next morning (Bob's 60th birthday as it happens) and get there before the hordes of tourists descended on the place. (That's crass, sheeplike tourists, of course. Not inquisitive, independently minded travellers such as our good selves.)
The bus wound its way up into the mountains, looking down on an alluvial flood plain (see - I stayed awake in geography lessons) covered in acres of olive trees, and dropped us off in New Delphi (the town, not Old Delphi, the archaeological site) at around 7:45.
Now, we had not bothered to bring maps or guide books on Delphi. Our reasoning went something along the lines of:
"Delphi is the single biggest tourist attraction and archaeological site in Greece, possibly in Western Europe.
The town of New Delphi derives almost all of its income from visitors to the archaeological site and museum.
Therefore they will have guidance, maps, background information and tourist information offices readily and easily available."
As we alighted from the bus we saw that this hypothesis had been tested and found severely wanting. The only two maps we found displayed were one purportedly showing the locations of the several hundred hotels in New Delphi and one showing (again purportedly) the route of the Little Tourist Train around the area. This latter seemed to have been inspired by the famous map showing the London underground, in that it probably accurately represented the sequence of stops made en route, but its concordance with local topography was negligible.
After trudging around for about 30 minutes we were saved by a local authority gardener who switched off his strimmer long enough to explain, in perfect English, that we needed to go right back to where we started and follow the road that our bus took on dropping us off for about 500 metres to the next stop.
Gardener: 2, Greek National Tourist Board: nil
We arrived at 8:15, a quarter of an hour after it had opened and five minutes after the first 4 coachloads had arrived.
Still, it wasn't that crowded, and the site was stunning. You can see why the ancients sited it there. The awe-inducing impact of a huge temple complex in that setting must have been huge. It's not just those Johnny-come-lately Abrahamic religions that know how to press all the psychological buttons to best effect.
There is little in the way of explanation or comment around the whole complex, including the museum. We overcame this by lurking surreptitiously on the fringes of a couple of large tour groups (from cruises we suspect) and whistling nonchalantly with a foreign accent whilst eavesdropping on the tour guides. It seems that most of the lower buildings were treasuries from different city states. The main focus was the altar where gifts and tributes were left and slaughtered and the temple of Apollo where prophecies were divined and prayers offered asking for the Gods' intervention in Earthly matters. Bob's interpretation was that the entire complex was effectively a Mycenaean cross between a Ponzi scheme and a Nigerian boiler-room scam, charging the supplicant to petition the God(s) to temporarily suspend the laws of the Universe on the behalf of an admittedly unworthy sinner. (© Bertrand Russell)
From Delphi we returned to Birvidik for a restrained birthday celebration before setting off the next day for Andikirron.