The End of Greece
An earlier post will give you the back story of Mani, an incredibly beautiful, mountainous region of southern Greece where my grandparents originated.
Mani is a peninsula. And like all peninsulas there’s a finality to it. It has an end point.
Mani ends at a lighthouse at the southernmost extremity of Cape Taenerus — as far as you can go on mainland Greece before plunging into the sea and swimming for Libya. To reach the lighthouse you have to leave your car in a dusty parking area and set out on foot. The path runs for maybe two kilometers and it’s not overly challenging — you just need to watch your step since the ground is strewn with loose gravel scattered between larger stones that protrude from the earth like dragon’s teeth.
I did the hike in around 30 or 40 minutes. On either side of the path the hillside was in full bloom. Tufts of green vegetation and purple flowers sprouted among the rocks, many of which were painted with colorful mosses and lichen. Where the shore melted into the sea, the water was a brilliant turquoise, transitioning to that vivid shade of blue you only encounter in the Med.
When the lighthouse finally came into view, it was pretty dramatic. Like an otherworldly monolith set down by some alien race in the middle of nowhere. A handful of others had made the trek that day, and we all sat on the shady, leeward side of the structure — a brief shelter from the wind and sun, and a rest for tired feet.
Gazing out at the wild ocean, it was easy to imagine a time before cruise ships and mega yachts. When this same promontory witnessed the passing of Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans, Venetians. Christian Crusaders. Saracen pirates. Nazi occupiers. British, French and American liberators. And countless more.
Not many lighthouses mark a place that’s seen that much history. That much coming and going of civilizations.
Many people visit Greece to see the monuments left by those civilizations, but few will ever go to the remote, windswept cape at the bottom of the Mani peninsula.
If you have the opportunity, it’s well worth the effort to get there. It may not appear in any of the guidebooks, or have the Instagram cache of the Acropolis, but it could end up being one of the most memorable experiences you have in Greece.
A swim and a star
I had read that there were remains of old Roman mansions just off the path, and that one contains a couple of surviving mosaics. Sure enough a look over a crumbling stone wall revealed the ground-level treasures, thousands of years old. No guards, and no barriers — you could dance a jig on top of them and no one would care.
One is called “The Star of Arias.” An incredible find in an incredible place.
Another incredible find was Paralia Tainero — Tainerus Beach. (I actually found it a couple of years ago before I ever went to the lighthouse - in an earlier post I called it “The Last Beach in Greece.”) More or less at the beginning of the path, it’s not much more than a notch in the shore, with a stony approach best attempted with water shoes. But the sea is the purest and cleanest you may ever experience, and a refreshing reprieve from the mid-day heat.
