Monthly Archives: October 2018

Mount Olympus: I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On

Mount Olympus is Greece’s highest mountain and the home of multiple ancient Gods, notably Zeus, who is claimed to be responsible for the periodic thunderclouds that form over it. You will meet people up there who still cover their bets as to who to follow. The main trailhead, east of the high ground, is at Enipeas Waterfall https://goo.gl/maps/Sc8AWCYejop. From there, you can hike to Skala, a subsidiary peak at 2,866m, and if you don’t mind some exposure (i.e. stunning downward views and a bit of a drop at some points), you can scramble to the highest point, Mytikas (2,918m). There are two refuges that offer bunk accommodation, meals and beverages, so you can travel fairly light. Most hikers will aim to do this in the summer, so be ready to deal with high sun exposure and carry plenty of water.

Screen Shot 2018-10-22 at 4.24.53 PM.png

Source: Google Maps, annotated.

The usual base town is Litochoro, which is a pleasant town with a busy main street that is at the base of a large gorge. You can start at the gorge entrance just west of town https://goo.gl/maps/fHRkvg1hggH2 and hike the 11 km to the trailhead at Enipeas Waterfall, although most people just get transport there.

Looking East to Skala and Mytikas

This handy mapboard graphic (with the mountain ridge oriented roughly northeasterly) shows the trail from Enipeas Waterfall to Spilios Agapitos Refuge (A – lower center), then up to Skala/Mytikas (top center), and then back to Kakkalos Refuge (C – upper right).

A typical itinerary is:

Day 1: Enipeas Waterfall – Spilios Agapitos Refuge

This breaks you in gently with a mostly shaded 5 km steady uphill trail. Spilios Agapitos is a large refuge with bunkhouse accommodation, showers and a restaurant: https://goo.gl/maps/RWatCa1j2yn You just need a sleeping bag liner for the bunkhouse. Book ahead http://mountolympus.gr/en/index.php#.W9ODnS-ZNsY – they also have smaller bunkrooms if you are in a group. Be prepared to stand aside for the pack mules on their supply runs to and from the refuge.

Day 1 Trail to Spilios Agapitos Refuge

: Spilios Agapitos Refuge

You get great early evening views east down the valley from the refuge as the clouds congregate over Mt. Olympus – it is not always visible at a distance, which is why it’s important to get in close.

View East Towards Aegean, Spilios Agapitos Refuge

Day 2: Spilios Agapitos – Mytikas Summit – Christos Kakkalos Refuge

This is a long day, as you’ll head up to the summit(s) and then turn back around and trek down to Christos Kakkalos Refuge, which involves returning part of the way you came until a turnoff that takes you north to Kakkalos. There isn’t any water on trail so take enough for the day. Note that walkers have a shorter deal just going to Skala https://goo.gl/maps/Wb5RqNohSSS2, while those willing to scramble to Mytikas will have an easily two hour round trip depending on levels of confidence and speed. It is reportedly quite safe to drop any heavy items in the stone rotunda at Skala. The terrain is treeless and rocky so sunblock, sunglasses and cover up.

Exposed Uphill Towards Skala

Looking Back from Skala

Taking a break on Skala (2,866m), you get to ponder the highest peak, Mytikas (2,918m), which is a quite exposed scramble consisting of a series of mini-descents and ascents, where you will keep your left shoulder to the hillside most of the way out.

Mytikas Peak from Skala with Muses Plateau and Aegean Sea in the Background

This is how the scramble to Mytikas starts, with a downhill descent. While the footholds are mostly secure, the downward view is extensive and not for people who hate the idea of exposure, even though they may able to deal with the reality, one step at a time.

You will have to deal with a series of down and up scrambles, and finally up as Mytikas is ultimately higher than Skala. Then the same trail on the way back.

For the most part while you have a good view down, there is a well marked path (red and yellow paint) to keep you on track. At a couple of points you have to work your way round large rock outcrops and take your time.

The view from Mytikas, not surprisingly, is quite worth it, with the Aegean not far off as the crow flies.

Muses Plateau and Aegean from Mytikas Peak

Having summited Mytikas and returned to Skala, it’s now time to go back down the way you came, cutting left part way along the trail to head north up to Kakkalos Refuge and Muses Plateau. You will keep the Skala-Mytikas Ridgeline to your left.

Day 3: Kakkalos Refuge and back to the Start

The Kakkalos Refuge https://goo.gl/maps/Pj85FH5be7F2 is a lot cosier than the larger Spilios Agapitos Refuge, and is located on the Muses Plateau, which is also accessible to the Prophet Ilias (Elijah) peak, where there is a small chapel. The Refuge serves home cooked meals and a range of beverages, and has a single common bunk area and a separate washroom. As with the other refuge, take a sleeping bag liner and book ahead http://www.olympus-climbing.gr/index.php?page=refuges&id=4.

You’ll probably arrive late afternoon after the peak so it’s a great place to have a quiet evening and take a stroll up to the Prophet Elias chapel the following morning.

Muses Plateau and Kakkalos Refuge

Kakkalos Refuge and local Hikers

Muses Plateau and Prophet Elias

It’s an easy hike back down to Spilios Agapitos Refuge, or just through to the start point at Enipeas Waterfall.

Logistics

If you stay in Litochoro, the following are recommended:

To Palio B&B http://www.paliolitohoro.gr Traditional northern Greek guesthouse at the top of town, great breakfast.

Meze Meze https://goo.gl/maps/KYaNFuapd5B2 As the name implies, very good.

Erato Wine Restaurant https://goo.gl/maps/wxWum6afzet

A Trip up the Minho River

Leave a reply

The Minho River runs between Spain and Portugal down to the Atlantic. While you can now easily drive either side of it, historically it was a hard border with ferry crossings and fortifications. Those have been replaced by a number of bridges and it now makes for a scenic drive or rail journey through what is world class white wine country growing Albariño and other grapes. The 70-kilometer stretch between Tui in the west to Ribadavia in the east is mostly along the border (which cuts into Spain partway) and is enough for a diversion or a day trip. Tui is accessible off the main north-south A3 (Portugal)/ A55 (Spain) highway and Ribadavia via the city of Ourense.

Salveterra de Minho and the Castelo de Salveterra

The Minho region is unspoiled and off the larger tourism routes that lead to Santiago de Compostela and Porto – both of which are only a few hour’s drive away. Large winery tracts descend into the river valley. A map search provides multiple winery locations and each country’s respective Minho tourism board provide pointers as to where to go.

The riverfront town of Ribadavia is easily overlooked and is a very well-preserved medieval fort town that deserves a stop. As the unofficial capital of the Ribeiro wine region, regional wines get good coverage and there are frequent wine festivals (including an annual fair each April) to check ahead for. Ribadavia once had a significant Jewish quarter with a community that survived the expulsions of 1492, echoed in Sephardic recipes still made in the local bakery, Tahona da Herminia.

Rúa da Xudería is at the center of the quarter and there is a Jewish information center is above the tourist office. You can take the regional train along the Minho to Ribadavia if the car doesn’t appeal but check your starting city – Ourense and Vigo are n the line but you can connect from other cities: http://www.renfe.com/EN/viajeros/mediadistancia/mapas_y_trayectos/Galicia.html

Ribadavia – Buxan Square

Castelo de Ribadavia

There are plenty of wineries either side of the river, focusing on white and rose, including the various Portuguese Vinho Verde dry whites. Albarino/Alvarino is also popular and tends to be fuller-bodied. For example, the Quinta Edmun do Val winery located in São Julião, about 12 km south of Valença in Portugal, produces an aged Alvarino which has some great dry sherry notes and is worth a visit.

Most of the cities along the river are pleasant enough for stopovers – including Valenca and Moncao in Portugal. If you want to include a beach stop, Guarda in Spain and Viano do Castelo in Portugal are where to head for.

Trotsky Time in Mexico City

Leave a reply

Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovich Bronstein), part founder of the Soviet state, was born in the Ukraine in 1879 and died in exile from Soviet Communism in Mexico City in 1940, by lurid ordered by Stalin. You can visit the compound that he lived in between April 1939 and August 1940, which offers an insight into how a well-known revolutionary who is being chased by Soviet intelligence spends his days. His house is inside a high-walled compound which included guard accommodation and multiple bunkers that not only saw over the wall but provided an overview of the entire compound area. In theory, it was quite defendable from a significant attack, and the bunkers were built in response to an unsuccessful attack by 20 gunmen in May 1940, led by a Soviet agent and David Siqueiros, a Mexican Stalinist and Spanish Civil War veteran, who in finest Mexican tradition was also a notable muralist whose works can be seen throughout the country. More about other muralists later.

Bunker and Guard Accommodation

The house itself, in darker yellow, accommodated Trotsky’s wife and one of his grandsons, and his offices.

For context, anyone who has seen a photo or video of Trotsky might imagine him as an intellectual with his head in the clouds, bewailing the direction that Communism took since the 1920s, after Stalin took control and exiled him to Almaty in 1928. He was a killer and ruthless organizer, key to the success of the new Communist state, who created the Red Army from scratch and enforced the 1917 revolution, defeating the Tsarist forces and establishing single-party dictatorship. In Mexico, he continued to foment alternatives to Stalinism, as well as being a sought-after author and commentator, and worked on a biography of his nemesis, Stalin.

The other office held his assistants and secretaries, who also documented his dictation using a Dictaphone machine and cylinders, which are still there.

Trotsky’s desk is arranged as it was on his last day of work. He was attacked with an ice axe by Ramon Mercader, a Spanish Soviet agent, and died in hospital the following day. Despite a head injury, Trotsky still managed to fight Mercader off until his guards arrived to detain him. Mercader was jailed by the Mexican authorities for 20 years and then moved to the Soviet Union. The grey-green book in the rack at front center is entitled “Finance Accounts of the United Kingdom.”

Trotsky was deported from Soviet Kazakhstan in 1929 and subsequently lived in Turkey, France and Norway before arriving in Veracruz, Mexico in early 1937. He lived for over a two years with the muralist, Diego Rivera (who had sponsored his visa) and the painter Frida Kahlo, who both lived nearby at the Blue House (now the Museo Frida Kahlo), which is a more popular attraction for which you should get tickets in advance. Trotsky’s house is fairly basic but typical of the houses of the time, although he enjoyed the large garden area and kept chickens and rabbits.

Trotsky was buried in the compound in 1940 and was later joined by his wife, Natalia Sedova, who died in Paris in 1962. She continued to support his views and oppose what she called a “Stalinist bureaucracy” that “led to the worsening of the economic, political and social positions of the working class, and the triumph of a tyrannical and privileged aristocracy”.

Location: Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky, Rio Churubusco 410, Mexico City. http://www.museotrotsky.com

The End of World on the Costa da Morte

Leave a reply

Galicia! Spain, but not really, more the Western outpost of the Celtic fringe of Europe where the known world ended for much of Europe’s history. Once you start heading west from the larger cities of A Coruna at the north end – or Santiago de Compostela from the south – you enter hilly wooded countryside that rolls down to a rocky coast facing an often foggy and choppy Atlantic Ocean.

The Romans called it “Finis Terrae,” or the End of the World. They still developed a major port at A Coruna, and had a road network that ran down to Braga in Portugal and beyond into Roman Spain. Brandomil Bridge is a 16th-century replacement over a Roman route and gold mining town that also came to be part of a pilgrim trail.

Brandomil Bridge

Shipwrecked Galicians concurred with the terminal theme, naming the area “La Costa da Morte.” The most exposed section of coast runs between Muxia in the north and Fisterra (in Galician – Finisterre for most everyone else) in the south. I started with Fisterra, a fishing port that sits on Cape Finisterre and which is a good base to explore the area.

Fisterra Harbor

Cape Finisterre is also the actual last stop for Camino de Santiago pilgrims. Of the 300,000 who walk to Santiago de Compostela each year, the most determined – or possibly religious – go on to Fisterra to complete the last 80-kilometer stretch.

Castelo de San Carlos, Fisterra

A good and less extensive hike from town can take you to the Fisterra lighthouse, about four kilometers southwest and facing the open Atlantic. You may well imagine Fisterra facing the open Atlantic, but the likely fog layer just masks the eastward view to the other side of a large bay. Due west of the town is the Praia Mar de Fóra, a secluded and often windswept beach.

Rocky bay, Muxia

There are plenty of small towns scattered along the coast. Muxia, on a northwest tip of the Costa da Morte, sits astride a raised headland facing northwest. It is a working fishing town surrounded by rocky countryside and well worth a stop to wonder how people scratched out a living 100 years ago.

Mirador do Corpiño viewpoint, Muxia

If you go to Restaurante d’Alvaro – one in a stretch of good seafood places by the harbor – and ask for a bowl of their seafood soup you get this:

Seafood Soup, Restaurante d’Alvaro

A maritime memorial church sits at the tip of the headland where you can carefully walk over large boulders to the ocean.

Nosa Señora da Barca Church

Muxia suburbs

In general a car is the best way to explore the area – however, there are regional bus networks out of A Coruna or Santiago that will take you along routes to Fisterra.

Carless in Galicia

Leave a reply

Pontevedra banned cars in it’s medieval town center in 1999 and hasn’t looked back. Ironically this makes it quite a car friendly city, because they built underground garages in the surrounding new town, where you can drop your car and start walking. Even better is the revitalized, pedestrian friendly downtown.

Pontevedra has a substantial old town with an open walking zone that can be crossed in 20 minutes. Separate from that, if you are looking for a place to go in northwest Spain, Pontevedra has a good combination of being a decent sized and well-preserved town that isn’t inundated with visitors.

Praza Alonso de Fonseca

Galician towns have well-populated and lively centers that don’t really empty out, except after lunch and of course in the depths of night.

Praza de Ferreria

Pontevedra sits at the east end of the Ria de Pontevedra by the River Lerez – once a larger medieval port, the estuary has silted up with Vigo becoming the main commercial port in the area. There is still a riverfront but post-war urban planning has put a main road along it, so this isn’t really a waterfront town.

Beer List at SoulBeer Pontevedra

Pontevedra is a great base to visit northwest Iberia, and is between the parks and beaches of the Rias Baixas, the River Minho wine country and Santiago de Compostela.

Raxo and the Ria de Pontevedra

Mexico City Culture Hop

Leave a reply

Mexico City: Four hours flying (give or take) from New York or San Francisco (respectively), but few people you ask seem to have visited. Mexico City is a world class destination with a unique past. You can get a first grip on that history very readily. Start at the Zocalo, where the cathedral originally constructed by the Spanish between 1573 and 1813 dominates the north side.

There is a decent itinerary that runs you from the Zocalo down to Chapultepec Park, which could take between a half and a full day.

Fine Arts Museum; Palacio de Bellas Artes.

10 minutes walk west from the Zocalo, the Bellas Artes is worth a look not only for its Spanish colonial-era collection but also some great murals. “Man, Controller of the Universe” by Diego Rivera is the place to start, derived from a similar commission from 1933 at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. A worker, in the center, controls the forces of capitalism (at left) and of communism (at right). The original in New York was destroyed, mostly because the sponsors at Radio Corporation of America disliked the Communist themes present in the mural. Subsequently, Rivera looked to recreate it in Mexico City.

Man, Controller of the Universe, 1934

Rivera was a Communist and while Trotsky gets second billing on the right after Lenin, you don’t see Stalin. While it’s well known that Trotsky sought political refuge in Mexico City from Stalin’s regime, and was assassinated there in 1940, it’s also notable that Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo sponsored his arrival in 1936 and housed him for three years. This mural pre-dates that relationship, with Trotsky in exile in France at that time.

Rivera was a keen commentator on Mexican history and his other murals line the same gallery.

There is a large set of traditional colonial-era artifacts and art, including Velazquez, Zurbaran and el Greco.

Diego Rivera Mural Museum.

Just west of the Bellas Artes in Alameda Park is the Diego Rivera mural museum. The main attraction is the mural “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central,” painted in 1946-47, which was installed in a hotel restaurant that was damaged in the 1985 earthquake and then moved to the museum. The mural depicts key people from Mexican history, around an early-20th century promenade in the park. At the center is La Calavera Catrina, a female skeleton who is an image of death in Mexico and an icon of the Dia de los Muertos. On her left is the painter as a child and behind him, his wife, Frida Kahlo.

There was a guitar concert performing on the Sunday visited, and they cranked it out.

The art of public protest continues to be developed, this on Reforma.

National Anthropological Museum.

At the west end of our tour, the anthropological museum located in Chapultepec Park is worth seeing to understand Mexico’s pre-Colombian history, particularly the origins and interaction of each of the dueling civilizations that made up the country. The Aztec Empire came to dominate the Valley of Mexico by the time of the arrival of the Spanish, is perhaps the best known, if only for that decisive point in history, and was a triple alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan.