Taygetos (Ταΰγετος) - Greece

The same day, after Giona, we went to the village Athanasios Diakos, which had to be the departure for Vardusia. We drove on the road and the sky was black - it was going to rain. The village at first sight was sheer, tight and not very suitable for stretching tents. We still managed to find two meadows among the houses, but left them for later on and kept on searching along the road. We were lucky and after a few kilometers we came across an unpaved road with signs written in Greek and only could guess that the first one was the name of the peak and the second was meaning "hut". We made our camp at the beginning of the road.   

The next morning the weather was still the same - a clear sunrise on a clear sky, which very soon became again dark and cloudy. We went on by car till the end of the forest and even more up to 1600 meters.



Here I don't want to go into details, but after some complicated maneuvers, we decided to drive towards Peloponnese. It was noon.
Here is the route: 

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We drove south. The roads here are not very good. We passed the Rio-Antirrio bridge and arrived at Peloponnese.

Then we took the highway to Athens. Before Athens we transitioned to another highway to Tripoli. Soon we left it and late in the afternoon we were at the foot of Taygetos.

We bought a map from Sparta and drove on to the inside of the mountain. We had to find a way to the hut from where we had the track to the peak with the common name Prophet Ilia. The clouds were moving fast in the sky and the wind was brutal. At first the road was good and then from an extension with drinking water and benches started a unpaved road from where the markings to the hut and the peak begun. The marking was perfect.



We moved on a little bit more with the cars until we found a good and flat place for the tents in a pine forest.
The rest of the story in photos:

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GPS track