The Corinth Canal & Itea

After spending an incredibly lazy afternoon cruising from Hydra after the tours were scrubbed, we arrived at the Corinth Canal. Or at least that's what we were told. We couldn't find it anywhere along the shoreline. Having sailed the Panama Canal, with its imposing locks, and the Suez Canal, with its imposing width,  and both visible from a long way away, we kind of know what a canal looks like, but try as we might, we couldn't see this one. Ramon, the Bar Manager/Sommelier, told us we were waiting for a ship heading down the canal, and sure enough, just before 6:00, a small freighter almost literally popped out of the trees! Ohhhhh, there's the canal. Then we started to sail toward it. The phrase "threading the needle" popped into our heads, followed by, "will we fit?". Of course, the Esprit has been through here numerous times, so obviously it would fit, but to us novices..........

On the outer deck as we sailed from Hydra

One of the islands we sailed by

First view of the Corinth Canal

To be charitable, Esprit is about 60 feet wide, and when we entered the canal we had about two feet of clearance on each side. In describing it to us Sunday evening, the Captain had said "you will be tempted to reach out and grab the trees, but please don't" and he wasn't kidding, because you almost could! As you can see from the pictures, it's narrow, plus we were sailing "up river" into a very strong current, and also into a very strong wind. The small tug in front of the ship is used more to keep us on the "straight and narrow" so as not to bump into the sides. The canal is about three kilometres long and it took us about half an hour to transit, emerging into the Ionian Sea, and turning south for Itea, our Wednesday port stop.

The clearance was about the same on both sides
all the way through the canal.

As we reached the western end of the canal

The water was quite a bit choppier on the other side. This
was our tugboat headed out to lead a ship for
an eastbound transit.

The beach and seawall at the Corinthian Gulf side
of the canal.

After a quiet and smooth night, surprising given the wind and waves we encountered leaving the Canal, we arrived Wednesday morning in Itea on the south-west coast of the Pelopponesian Isthmus, basically, the other side of the isthmus from Nafplion. Our tour today was The Oracle of Delphi and Resort Town of Arachova, and it was the largest tour of the day, with 38 guests, more than half, on the tour. The Oracle, so we learned, was essentially a female fortune teller who lived in the Temple of Apollo on a mountainside about 25 minutes from present day Itea. The Temple complex is a rather large area built into the side of the mountain about halfway up. What we visited were the remains of the third Temple and its smaller temples, treasury buildings, an ancient theatre and a sports arena. The first two temples were destroyed by earthquakes in antiquity, and the third was destroyed by the Emperor Constantine as a "pagan relic" after he converted to Christianity in the 2nd Century AD. Over the years it had been buried, and a small town had even been built up over the site, some of it using stone from the temple ruins. The site was re-discovered by the Greek Antiquity Authorities in the late 1800's, and became a major archaeological dig, which included moving the small town a short distance away, and gave the world the site as it is today.

Driving up to Delphi we passed through part of the largest
continuous olive grove in Greece - over 1 million trees!

Even more of the trees, with Itea and the shore in the distance.

Still more olive grove, with an aqueduct on the left side. This
originates on Mt. Parnassus and runs from there all the way
to Athens, about 150 km away, delivering fresh water. Sometimes
it is open and other times buried.

 

To the Ancient Greeks, Apollo was the "Head God", son of Gaia, or Mother Earth, and according to the ancient mythology, he determined that this location was the "Centre of the World", the world being flat, and Greece being the entire world, and so ordered that his Temple be built at the centre of the world, known in Greek Mythology as "The Navel The World". Like some modern religions, Ancient Greeks were expected to make a pilgrimage to Apollo at least once in their life, but anyone could ask the Oracle, a woman with the title Pythia, for a prediction provided they followed certain rules. After cleansing themselves at a "bath" below the temple, they would enter through the gate and follow the "Sacred Path, which is what we did today. Before entering the Temple of Apollo they would have to give an offering to the Oracle (and the more important you were, the bigger the offering usually was, with the term 'monumental' coined because the leaders of the city-states of the time literally presented monuments), and then they could go into the first room and pose their question to the "middle-man", the male priest who was the only one allowed into Pythia's chamber.

According to legend, Pythia lived in the third of three rooms within Apollo's temple. In foretelling the future she would chew fresh laurel leaves, a hallucinogenic, the effects of which were compounded by methane gas leaking from the floor of the chamber. When asked a question she would go into a hallucinatory trance and would scream and shout gibberish answers, which only the male priest could "interpret". So as always, it's the "middleman" who had all the power. And the Oracle was never wrong as her answers were always ambiguous. As our guide explained, Ancient Greek was mostly an oral, not written, language. If a woman wanted to know if her baby would be a boy or a girl, the answer would be "Of course you will have a boy, not a girl." Note the position of the comma. If the baby turned out to be a girl it was because the Oracle's answer was :"Of course, you will have a boy not a girl." The comma after the "not," meant you would NOT have a boy, but a girl, so the Oracle was not wrong, you just misplaced the punctuation in her answer!!! One of the more famous Oracle predictions was one where a leader about to invade another territory asked if he would be victorious. The Oracle said, "When you go to battle, an empire will fall." He took that to mean he would win, but he actually lost. The Oracle wasn't wrong at all, just not specific as to which empire would fall! We figure this must be the source of all political doublespeak in the world today!

Here are some of the photos of the archaeological site:

From the forum near the entrance. People
met here to discuss and trade, as this
was not just the place to ask the Oracle
questions. It was one of the
more important meeting places in
this part of ancient Greece.

Looking down at the remains of the
Athena Pronaia, the Temple of Athena
that people passed before reaching
the Temple of Apollo

The Athenian Treasury - the city-states
built their own treasuries where their offerings
to the Oracle were housed. This is the
only one that was rebuilt, only because they
found most of the original materials.

Looking up at the columns from the Temple
of Apollo and more particularly the polygonal stone wall.
It has withstood all of the earthquakes and rock
slides over 3,500 years because the stones were cut into these
odd shapes and fitted exactly together. 

The columns at the entrance of the Temple of Apollo.

Yes, we were here!

After our visit to Delphi and the museum where many of the artifacts are displayed, we drove up to the town of Arachova, at just under 1,000 metres on Mt. Parnassus, where we were going to have some free time to explore the town. In the tour descriptions, Arachova sounds like a small, old, quaint village; in fact it is a fairly large town with lots of traffic on small streets, rather built up because it is the base for the downhill skiing in Greece. Yes, you did read that correctly - snow skiing in Greece. Mt. Parnassus is in fact about 3,300 metres, or around 10,000 feet high, and in the winter months December through February, there is enough snow on top that there are three ski areas on the other side of the summit from Arachova.

Our trip through town was an adventure, as the roads are barely wide enough for two buses to pass each other. And of course, we had to come across another bus going the opposite way. It took a few minutes, but the other guy finally backed up a bit (we had another bus behind us so that was rather impossible for us) and we got through. But, after stopping for a panoramic view of the town, the escorts took a poll of the bus, and we all elected to go back to Esprit instead of trying to find our way around the busy town, so that's what we did.

Arachova is literally built into the side of the mountain

On the way to our scenic viewpoint. As you can imagine,
there are lots of staircases in the town, as we saw on our
drive through.

If Arachova is as busy as we saw in summer, we don't want
to know what it looks like at the height of ski season!

Another relaxed afternoon on board, but we had a little excitement after we left port. The winds had picked up a little and the captain announced that it might be a bit windy on the outside decks. That was something of an understatement! Larry was at the Sunset Bar with a couple of other people when the wind started to howl across the deck. One lady went after one of the high-backed lounge chairs that looked like it was about to fly over the railing, Larry rescued wine glasses that almost blew off the bar, and the deck staff ran around collecting pillows blowing off the chairs, and covering up the furniture. A little later, Phil the entertainer had his largest crowd to date in the Cove for his pre-dinner set!

And after dinner, we finally found the other two Canadians on board, who happen to be from Kleinburg. Next stop, Parga, where we have nothing planned but a trip into town to look around. We'll have plenty of time for that as we don't leave for Corfu until 4:00 Friday morning!