Thursday, April 28, 2011

Kalamata to Koroni to Methoni

We left Kalamata riding in a light rain. We put on our rain jackets for a short time, but soon took them off due to the high humidity. Our route was very flat along the famous Messinean plain contested in history. We planned on camping and soon found Camp Koroni about 1 km outside (and above) the town. We set up the tent and had long hot showers.





We continued to rough it with the free Internet next to the pool and then had a wonderful dinner served up by the campground owner.





Of course, on our first night camping it rained. Well, it is Spring, the rain was light, and it stopped before we rose in the morning. This morning we descended into town and then climbed up to the castle. The Venetians built many fortifications on major points on the Peloponnesus peninsula. This castle was really invincible.











The road to Methoni had a major climb and when we reached the top a Greek man came up and was turning off on to a side road. We said hello and the conversation just took off. He was on his way to prune his father's olive trees. His name is Panagiotis Vassilopoulos and he answered all our questions about olive production.






He invited us to cottage on his father's property to further discuss olive production, but we had to push on. However, we're now friends on Facebook. We found out it takes 5 kilos (11 lbs) to make 1 liter of oil and the very old trees we have seen are around 200 + years old.






After we descended to the coast, several beautiful vistas opened up. We soon came into Methoni, which also has a famous castle.






Tomorrow we'll visit the castle before we leave town.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi mr Dave I m panagiotis i have mistaken about how many kilos of olives need to produce 1 litre of olive oil it needs about 5 kilos of olives to produce 1 litre of olive oil please correct it if possible.

Dave and Belinda said...

Hi Mr. Panagiotis, thank you for the correction. We will make note. We are wishing you a very good yield and a better market this year.

Anonymous said...

panagiotis : thank you very much mr Dave i hope to meet each other in the future to have an interesting discuss
about agricultural life.