I slept for most of the flight from Athens to Thessaloniki, but towards the end I woke up suddenly and looked out the window. There I was sure I could see my destination – the Athos (eastern) finger of the three-fingered Chalkidiki peninsula. This area is often simply called Mt Athos after the name of mountain at its southern end, or ‘the Holy Mountain’, because it is an area totally dedicated to monasteries and to prayer.
When I got to Thessaloniki I caught a taxi to the bus station and then waited for a bus connection to Ouranoupoli, on the border of the Mt Athos area. Mt Athos is a part of Greece, but is separately administered by Othodox monks under an edict given by the Emperor in Constantinople 1,000 years ago! I was going to Mt Athos to continue my pilgrimage and my encounter with Eastern orthodoxy.
On the bus to Ouranoupoli I caught another view of the mountain. It was almost magnetic in its attraction.
Ouranoupoli is beautiful in itself – a lovely seaside town. It is also the main stopping point for monks and pilgrims heading to the monasteries on the Holy Mountain. There are over 20 monasteries and some smaller establishments or hermitages on the Athos peninsula, which is home to a total of perhaps 2,000 monks. Each day up to 90 Orthodox pilgrims and up to 10 non-Orthodox pilgrims are permitted to enter this area for a 4-day (3 night) period. (The numbers are limited so that it doesn’t just become a tourist destination but so that prayer will continue to be the main focus of the area.) I was privileged to be one of the 10 non-Orthodox pilgrims due to enter the Holy Mountain on 29 April. The monks do not allow women to enter the peninsula. There are explanations of this that relate to the area’s dedication to the Virgin Mary (the Theotokos – mother of God) but I suspect that it is more to help the monks to be single-minded in their devotion to prayer. Murray – this must be the ultimate centre for men’s spirituality in the world!
I found the hotel that I had booked, had a bit of a walk around the town, found a place to have dinner and went to bed early.
The next morning I got up and headed off for the Athos Pilgrim’s Bureau, where I needed to collect my entry permit. The office opened at 7.30am, and well trained by my Jerusalem experiences, I got there early and was the first to get my permit. I went back to the hotel, finished packing and had breakfast. I left my large suitcase at the hotel and headed off to board the ferry. By about 10am we were leaving the dock.
We headed down the coast you can see in the photo above, and as we travelled the scenery was stunningly beautiful.
Athos is a wilderness area, and it was spring, so the wild-flowers were out.
I took lots of photos – but the above ones will have to suffice in giving you an idea of how beautiful the land and seascape were.
It was the Easter season (after Easter Sunday and before Pentecost), and one of the monasteries we passed (Panteleimon) was Russian. As the ferry docked, the greeting went up from a man on the wharf ‘Christos voskryese’ (Christ is risen!) and the response from those who were there was ‘Vaisyine voskryese’ (He is risen indeed!).
This or, in the monasteries I visited, the Greek equivalent, was heard throughout my time on the Holy Mountain.
Eventually we arrived at our destination, the port of Dafni, and took a bus from there to the administrative centre of the Athos peninsula, Karyes. I was wanting to extend my stay by one day, and needed official approval from the office in Karyes. It was not so easy to find it. No-one I tried spoke English or German or French, but I finally asked someone whether he spoke English and in a fluent Liverpuddlian accent he said, ‘a little’. So he spoke to a friend who could speak Greek and he asked someone who knew and eventually the location of the office was explained to me.
I went to the office to get my approval, but the man I needed to see was at a meeting, so the welcomer/ doorman sat me down, and brought me a drink and a biscuit, and we waited. And waited. And eventually the doorman, who spoke no English but communicated with me through a young Russian man who spoke some English, told me that since the official I needed still was not there I should just go away and stay an extra day and not worry. Having just been in Israel where not worrying about things like that can get you into a lot of trouble, I would have preferred to go away with an official approval in my hand, but I guessed that I needed to follow the advice I had been given by the friendly doorman and headed off.
When I got outside all the buses in Karyes had left for their various destinations and I asked at an office when the next bus would be leaving for Vatopedi monastery, which was my planned destination for that evening. “Tomorrow,” was the accurate but not very helpful answer. I was told that a taxi would cost me 40 Euro (around NZ$80). I asked how long it would take to walk (the Lonely Planet Guide had called the path from Karyes to Vatopedi a ‘long, lovely forest path’) and I was told around 3½ hours. So I decided to walk. I bought myself a guide map that included the walking tracks on the island – and set out. It was around 1.30pm.
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