Vathia, Lady in Black

We drove past Vathia, and to the very end of the road in this almost desolate countryside. We see many old women wearing long black dresses One lady, way out in nowhere, was sitting on a rock, looking like death warmed over. We took her picture, and waved our thanks, but she just sat there.

There are dozens of towers near the town of Vathia, at the tip of the Máni peninsula, which is at the south edge of Peloponnese. Some of them have been converted into a tourist hotel. Many of the 800 towers look like ruins, with no one around, but there are clothes drying on the line outside others.

We stopped for breakfast on the shore in the little town of Gerolimenas, population 76. Even though the town was very old, and looked rather dilapidated, everyone seemed to have electricity and a TV antenna. There were two RV’s from Germany, who were traveling together, also stopped for breakfast. Emmy’s cousin Hugo had been in Greece with the Germany Army in WWII. I told him there must be more German tourists in Greece now, than there were German soldiers in WWII.