2018 Eastern Mediterranean Trip - Day 30, The Mani Peninsula

Our travels today took us to the Mani Peninsula. This rugged peninsula is renowned in Greece as an area of physical ruggedness matched with a ruggedness of their people that kept them independent of the many conquerors of Greece until it was decided to become part of the independent Greek state after the war of independence with Ottoman Turkey.

During our trip today we went through out of the way villages, villages that have become tourist outposts, and the home of the War of Independence. We visited an artisanal olive oil producer. We went through the best known limestone caves in Greece. With so much to cover, I've decided to group things together in themes rather than go through it all in chronological order.

Studies in Darkness

We've been plagued with hazy skies our whole time here

Ioannis, our guide, tells us this has to do with sand blowing in from Africa

So trying to take landscape pictures (and the Mani has some spectacular landscape) has been very difficult 

So I tried to channel some of the advice our Athens photo workshop guide gave us to embrace the dark

Olive Oil

We drove to this mountain town where Ioannis had heard about this particular producer. They have been doing this since the 18th century! Although they follow older methods, as you will see, they are not archaic and they have built a nice niche business. I decided to document their whole production process

Olives come in from farmers still attached to stems and with leaves on

They are dumped here

This machine separates the fruit from everything else, using high pressure air to blow the twigs and leaves away

Then into a crushing mill

In the old days this was animal powered

The olives are crushed into a slurry

They are put into bags

The bags are put onto a press and all the fluid is pressed out

The fluid consists of water and oil

A centrifuge is used to separate the two

The water can be used as a fertilizer

This is the solid material that is left after pressing

It is sold to industrial presses that do a second pressing that produces a lower grade oil used in soap and very cheap olive oil

We were treated to a snack of their oil, olives, local ham and cheese and got into a deep conversation about their business

This mill markets all their oil under their own label to Germany, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK

Towns

So many villages, towers, churches

The Diros Caves

Lunch!

We have been delving into Greek cuisine this whole tour

The place we stopped to today said all they served was local dishes

This was a salad of oranges, potatoes, onions, and cheese!!!!

The sweetness of the oranges when well with the saltiness of the cheese

This is braised rooster!

It was very good

A moussaka 

Postcard Perfect Greece

The weather cleared up in the late afternoon and we were able to take pictures that would qualify for any Greek tourism advertising!

 

 

Ionnis says THE quintessential tourism shot is a table, a drink, the ocean and an island

Voila