Rope-y
When we take Giugiu to school in the valley behind Poros, in Agia Eirini, sometimes we take the chance to see something in the area during those hours between dropping her off and picking her up.
I have known about a cave in Poros gorge for a while. Books talk about it as the place with the first evidence of human presence on the island, going back to the Neolithic, a few thousand years ago. I never had a clue to where exactly I could find it, until I found the website with information about the archaeological excavations in this cave:
www.drakainacave.gr/
Beautiful explorer
So it’s the end of September and the summer is still very hot, perfect for little excursions. We park the car by the roadside and look for a path. It’s not very promising, the gorge wall is steep. There is a faint path starting from the bridge in the gorge just before Poros, and as we take it the signs look promising, lots of artificial constructions unusual for the standard goat path, like guard-rail pieces supporting parts of the path.
Cavewoman thoughts “…and here I could hang those pretty rocks…”
Then it gets seriously steep and the soil is extremely brittle, but they have placed handy ropes to help the climb. We use the rope to pull our weight up, then rely a little less on the ropes once we realize they are tied to bushes that don’t look especially stable or to precariously small rocks. It’s quick enough to get to the cave. The cave is not very big but it’s quite open, it makes a nice shelter. We imagine what it must have been like to live there, to sleep in there, to heat it with fire, to weather out storms, as we have a look around. Only when we get back I read the website again and find out that it wasn’t actually used for permanent residence, but probably just for gatherings.
Landslide
The way down is fun, moving the stones means they fall down all the way to the bottom of the valley. As we whistle the Indiana Jones theme and take some pictures we get back home happy, wondering if we could spend a few days as cavemen. I suggest to get here just before a storm and watch it pass from inside the cave. I’m not sure we will ever come back though, as lately we’ve been talking about leaving Kefalonia for good. Possibly.
Spider man