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is like tattooing the harshness of this landscape on your skin . The road to Mountanistika is narrow and winding , and offers dramatic views of the Mediterranean Sea , it ends just beyond the village , where two or three families live . Lots of crumbling towers , some of them under restoration , a man was kneading some cement , an old woman approached , gesturing to us not to throw our cigarettes on the ground because there is a risk of everything catching fire .
The southernmost tip , the peninsula within a peninsula ending in Cape Tenaro , is almost uninhabited but full of coves and tiny inlets , some as picturesque as they are difficult to reach . This windswept spur of rock demands to be experienced on foot with a trek to the lighthouse at its tip , the southernmost in continental Europe after Tarifa in Spain . It is worth stopping to admire the mosaics of the Roman baths or to browse in the Hades grotto , the small cavern once considered to be one of the entrances to the Realm of Shadows , on which a small Byzantine chapel stands . The east coast , on the other hand , abounds in easily accessible beaches , whose fishers ’ villages have become unmissable destinations for enjoying fresh fish by the sea , in the shadow of the ever-present stone towers .
The tower houses that rise everywhere are those of the clans that ruled the region , facing each other for centuries in bloody feuds called vendetta . They fought for the possession of land , but the causes of such violence and bellicosity are to be found in the pride of the aristocracies , over the centuries , groups and families who did not agree to bow to new rulers converged in the Máni .
So , it was for the Spartiates nobles defeated by Epaminondas ' Thebans in 371 B . C ., who preferred to retreat to these mountains and continue living according to the laws of Lycurgus . Slavs and Avars came to the southern slopes of the Taígetos and then , in the 15th century , it was the turn of Greek nobles – deprived of their property and titles by the Ottomans – who arrived together with Franco-Greek and Veneto-Cretan families . Despite being descendants of the great Byzantine aristocratic families , these nobles were dedicated to piracy and brigandage , alternating unspeakable brutality with frauds bordering on farce .
Although women had to tend the fields and bury the dead , they were no less warlike than men . Several attacks by the Ottomans and their allies during the Greek War of Independence were foiled by women and old men caught by surprise
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