DAY 4: On the way back
The Oracle of the Dead, Parga and a Friendship Lost
Ancient mysteries, tourist traps, troublesome dogs, insurance commissions and a ferry journey that ended with one fewer friend.
The Necromanteion: A Visit to the Underworld
The sun is shining, and our day will be interesting as we visit a site dedicated to contacting the dead — the Necromanteion — and then head on to the seaside town of Parga.
The site of the Necromanteion is pretty spectacular, firstly because it sits on a hill overlooking a river valley, surmounted by cloud-fringed mountains.
One of them could easily have inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.
Even without the grey-and-white stone site and monastery, this would be a deserved stop for the view of the valley and its mountainous fringe, like a giant pastry.
I gather three rivers met just beneath the hill to form a lake, now silted up.
This is the Acheron Valley.
One of these rivers is the Acheron, which features in mythology as the river along which the dead are carried.
It is unclear to me whether Odysseus is supposed to have visited this place.
It would be quite appropriate for the trip if he did!!
The site is also a sort of oracle and sanctuary where votive offerings were given by worshippers seeking to know the future.
A sort of self-deprivation camp with future clairvoyance attached.
I might just ask Hades and Persephone a couple of questions myself after this day.
A Journey into the Darkness
Anyhow, we had breakfast and left the Dioni Hotel, travelling north.
Kirsty had seen us and related that her trip the previous day had been wonderful, if a bit tempered by an Irishman who talked for Ireland.
She was going on a dolphin day out and then meeting the two guys who had taken her out the day before.
She also volunteered that she had a rape alarm, so if anything happened, it would make a racket.
I really wondered what the world had become when women needed such devices.
I was probably naive. The news was full of such lunacy that you might honestly feel you needed to be tooled up, even on the Tube in England… man or woman!!
It took forty minutes to get up the coast to the hilltop Necromanteion.
I must say, the place was very interesting indeed.
After paying €10, you are faced with the Cyclopean walls surrounding the site.
The intricate, jigsaw-like stone blocks, which are double-deep with a rubble fill in between, are incredible.
Reading the plan inside, you see that the site was no more than three acres.
I have to say it looks smaller as a built site.
The various rooms for votive presentations or monks’ living quarters, I can only think, are the best guesswork of the Greek archaeologist who dug the site in the 1960s.
The Chamber of the Dead
The incredible feature of the site is the underground vaulted chamber, which is dark and water-filled.
A metal staircase leads down now, but I gather the chamber was sealed in ancient times.
The later Christian church on the top, in some fortress style, shows that for some 2,500 years the place was important.
You might say the oracle to the dead and the worship of Hades and Persephone had somehow made the site important enough for Christians.
The fact that you can visit a site linked to Odysseus and the river Acheron is also incredible.
There are few places that have influenced me as much as this.
You can feel the energy.
Going into the subterranean vaulted chamber was incredibly macabre, and there was no noise.
Luckily, nobody was at the site. It was only thirty minutes into the visit that others appeared.
Parga: Greek Beauty Meets Commercialism
Our idea was to go on to Parga, which I was under the impression was a beautiful seaside town.
As you pulled into the town, it was clear this was much more touristy.
We had to pay for parking, such was the intensity of development.
The bones of the site were wonderful.
A double small harbour, with a small forested island some two hundred metres from the shore, with a church on it.
A fringing sand beach next to a more commercial harbour, which had a fortress clinging to its precipitous, wooded sides.
The totality of the seaside, however, was covered in eateries, cafés and paraphernalia shops.
It’s like Greek commercialism gone turbo.
Talking to a local, he said, regrettably, nothing served up now resembled anything Greek.
I might say more Spanish than Greek.
Mmm.
It might be called Greek, but it’s ersatz.
He said that if we wanted better food, we should go to Plataria, twenty minutes down the coast.
This is what we ended up doing because the ferry was at 9.30 pm from Igoumenitsa, and Plataria was on the way.
Plataria: Lunch, Cats and a Barking Dog
Plataria was more Greek, but also very closed.
There was a place serving grilled meats and a place called Olga serving up fish.
We went for Olga and grabbed one of the two tables facing the largely empty harbour.
I have to say the food was fifty-fifty, but it was the start of the downward spiral of the day, ending in calamity.
The restaurant only had a small selection, it being the end of the season, and no moussaka.
Stefano wanted moussaka.
Firstly, our arrival at this place, even though it was late, suddenly tempted others to sit down.
Our food arrived after thirty minutes. No shakes there.
I had an orange and Stefano a beer.
My sardines and the calamari also attracted cats.
Our next-door table was now occupied by a couple with a dog.
The relative quiet solemnity of the seaside tables descended into barking every thirty seconds.
Now, I am a cat person.
But I don’t mind dogs.
Also, the cats live off the scraps at these sorts of places. They are the residents, so to speak.
It was all a bit unseemly.
My view is that if you have a dog in a place where people are eating, you either shut it up somehow or move.
It spoiled the afternoon, I have to say.
Should one say anything?
I still don’t know.
But if you don’t, you have people simply expecting others to put up with the mores of their dog.
People sleep with dogs, dote on them and treat them like children.
I can see they perform a purpose, giving comfort and so on, but it was one of the few issues I had in Greece during a year spent staying here.
I had a chat with the owner of Olga.
Kalami Camping: An Unexpected Stop
We had a few hours to kill and headed back along the road we had come on, hoping to find another place by the sea.
We dropped down to a place called Kalami Camping.
It was a private site, and we convinced the guy we would only have a coffee if he allowed us to park up.
He was very kind, and so were the staff.
He used the term mate in a not-dissimilar way to the Mermaid chap in Preveza.
We sat down mid-terrace and surveyed the camper vans.
The place had its own beach and looked nicely run, in a very local sense.
I ordered a coffee and Stefano a tea.
I spoke with the ladies serving.
Stefano’s tea had gone cold when he emerged.
The Insurance Problem
It turned out that this life assurance guy had been giving him a hard time about cancelling the policy.
He had spoken to the disgruntled guy for twenty minutes.
I said, “Well, it’s a lot of money for something unlikely to transpire…”
We then went over the €20,000 commission and how, even in the first year, he might get 40% of this.
No wonder he was brassed off.
At the same time, and earlier, Stefano had said some guests — Americans — were renting his flat in Alicante.
One of the basins in the flat did not discharge water.
Or so the friend of the two Americans had said.
We both concluded that it must be user error.
But all day Stefano had been trying to get his brother to go to the flat, which he hadn’t.
One of the Americans had now locked themselves in the bathroom and was insisting they needed releasing.
Fair enough.
A Table We Should Have Left
While Stefano had been missing, the local ladies had set all the tables for evening dinner except ours.
Cloths and sets of cutlery.
I asked if we might move.
They said no.
But, of course, it was not really right.
We had overstayed our welcome and should have moved.
Over the next thirty minutes, Stefano tried to get somebody to go to the flat.
I ordered a moussaka, partly because Stefano had wanted one at lunch and partly to pay a sort of rent for the inconvenience of having the table.
Stefano was now trying to talk with the guy fixing it.
Frustration and vexation with the Americans, I feel.
Finally, the woman was released.
The tap not flowing simply came through as a text saying one of the two Americans had got the tap working.
I had split the moussaka in two and eaten my half.
I encouraged Stefano to try it, even eat it.
He wanted to share it.
I deduced he didn’t really want it.
So I simply plopped it upside down and went to pay.
Two Imported Problems
Stefano and I had really fallen out over two imported issues.
1. An insurance policy.
A salesman was not happy about Stefano cancelling it.
Avarice.
2. An American who, like some of the species, simply can’t cope with the normal world.
What is the term?
I don’t know.
It’s a sort of pampered privilege.
Anyhow, I dropped Stefano at the port because he did not want to carry on the journey with a grumpy David.
My final word for him was that he could send the Americans my best regards.
Not.
The Final Straw
It was a similar incident to the dog, really.
You should not bring your problems to others.
Not me, by the way, but we occupied the middle of the café with Stefano speaking on the phone for twenty minutes, like in some Italian soap opera.
The people behind me, who had sat down for something to eat, were completely disregarded.
I wanted out as soon as Stefano had deduced it was user error on the part of his American guests.
They did not even return his call once the tap was working and the woman had been released from the bathroom.
But I now travel on minus a friend.
The Grimaldi Ferry: A Prison Cell at Sea
The Grimaldi ferry is, as the name suggests…
The room is big and basic.
The nearest comparison I might think of is a prison cell made of plastic… or the stuff they used to make canoes out of.
The Next Day
Grimaldi breakfast is served as the boat blasts on.
David Jackson
12.10.2026