We pass remote village homes, sheep’s bells clinking on the hillsides. Beyond the cliffs I can see Aegean islands looming in the distance. At a lone chapel dedicated to Prophet Elias, Alexandrou pulls out heaps of walnuts, oranges, and koulourakia (biscuits made with local olive oil and citrus zest). Then, we let the path draw us back inland for the grand finale: the stunning vertical limestone rocks of Leonidio.
This part of Greece is rarely seen, and it surprises me, given the role the Peloponnese has played in the country’s long, fabled story. Eons before The Odyssey, another hero fought the first six of his twelve Herculean labors on the peninsula: In the premier wine region of Nemea, Hercules overtook a monstrous lion. In the mountainous Arcadia, where both Zeus and Hermes were born, he trapped the Erymanthian boar. Mycenae in Argolis gave birth to the first Greek civilization, the Mycenaeans, and inspired one of its most prominent characters, the Mycenaean king Odysseus.
The impact didn’t stop with the ancients: the Byzantine Empire’s last stronghold, Mystras, is in the Peloponnese. Greece’s fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire originated here, as did the new country’s first capital, Nafplio.
Post-WWII and the bitter civil war that followed, the Peloponnese, along with other Greek regions, experienced periods of severe devastation and death, internal displacement, and waves of emigration. More recently, the 2008 financial crisis disrupted the rebounding population again, forcing many young Greeks to leave for places like Northern Europe or Australia. Some of the most remote parts of the peninsula experienced rural flight, turning hillside Vamvakou in Laconia with nine year-round residents or the no-resident village of Lasta in nearby Arcadia into literal ghosts.
Back in Leonidio, I step into a 19th-century stone mansion to meet author and educator Eleni Manou. With her striking red-black-and-gold skirt flapping in the wind, Manou explains that, alongside other Leonidio residents, she’s Tsakonian, a direct descendant of ancient Spartans. The isolated villages in this part of the Peloponnese were cut off from the outside world by the hard-to-pass Parnon range until the 1950s, when modern roads were built. The topography of the land helped this branch of Spartan to survive, but as the area opened up, Tsakonian started vanishing. Today, less than a quarter of the 10,000 Tsakonians carry the rare dialect from the Bronze Age, most of them elders. Manou has published children’s books in Tsakonian and organized workshops in an effort to preserve the language that predates modern Greek by three millennia, because, as she tells me, “Language is not just words, it’s a culture alive.” In Leonidio, an annual festival held in July translates Tsakonian traditions into present-day context, and street signs in town are now proudly displayed in Tsakonian alongside Greek.