On Wednesday morning we checked out of the Hotel Dioscouri and loaded our luggage into the car. My first challenge of the day had been to walk down a winding road that passed within a block of the hotel in order to determine a route to drive the car from where I had parked it. We didn't want to repeat the experience of carrying our heavy suitcases back down the same flights of stairs by which we had come up. As in any centuries-old town, the lanes in the hilly part of Nafplio were never required to be wide enough for motor vehicles. Several of them are just wide enough to admit a compact car, but all of them lead to dead ends, usually before you reach your destination. Few streets interconnect, and it is rarely possible to do something we take for granted in America: to drive around a block. In an attempt to drive to the hotel by intuition the day before, I had aimed high; we squeezed narrowly past several parked cars and came to an impasse at the Catholic church, where I parked, about five blocks short of the hotel. The next morning, once I found the correct route, then back up to the car, I had to begin by driving backwards down the way we had come, past the parked cars, to the base of the old town. Should you ever need to drive to the Hotel Dioscouri in Nafplio, remember this: take ΣΥΝΓΡΟΥ toward the water and turn left on ΒΟΥΒΟΥΛIΝΑΣ; then proceed the entire length of the waterfront (you will see the Bourtzi on your right) to the tip of town, and head left up the hill; pass the historic Venetian cannons, and curve to the left until you come to the lower parking lot for the Hotel Xenia. The Dioscouri is a block away, on VΥΡΟΝΟΣ (named for Lord Byron, who is considered a national hero for his role in the War or Independence).

Even on this short drive I got my first lesson in Greek driving protocol when the car behind flashed me for showing the courtesy of slowing down to let another car pull away from the curb. When driving in Greece (as I should have learned from the Athenian taxi drivers) you are expected to use your horn frequently to announce your approach to almost any stationary vehicle and to remain aggressive or lose out.

Maryl and I said goodbye to a few neighborhood cats and started off for Sparta, passing along the coastline that arcs westward along the Argolid gulf. There wasn't much traffic on the roads, and some of the small towns we passed through were void of people. It was New Year's Day. Being somewhat weary from my cough and a low-grade fever (half a degree on the celsius thermometer that I carry on foreign travels), I had gone to bed the night before soon after dinner (that is to say, at 10:30 or 11:00), before any festivities began. At midnight I was awakened by the loud cracking of fireworks in the streets, but I rolled over and went right back to sleep.

From the coastline opposite Nafplio the road climbs a low range of mountains. As we had learned three years earlier in Crete while driving through the mountains that form the backbone of that island, driving in Greece on anything other than one of the few major highways does not get you anywhere in a hurry. The formal speed limit is 90 kilometers an hour, which is about 55 mph. On open sections of road I occasionally got the Nissan up to that speed, but the roads are constantly bending, limiting visibility, and the vibrations in the car made 90 seem a life-threatening speed. More often we cruised at around 80. The road frequently passes through small towns, where the posted limit is 50 (although Greek drivers don't seem to observe many of the rules). And while climbing the mountain roads with a puny 1.0-liter engine, I was lucky to keep the speed between 50 and 60 (30 - 35 mph), slowing to 30 or 40 on the frequent hairpin turns. As a rule, getting somewhere takes about twice as long as you think it ought to.

For the slow pace we were compensated with spectacular views. The road rose higher and higher above the Argolid gulf, beyond which we probably could have identified Nafplio, if we knew where to look. The mountains themselves were reddish and rocky, with little vegetation other than scrub growing on the slopes. It had always seemed natural to me that Greece was a dry and rocky country. Thus it took me by surprise when I read in the Lonely Planet guide that ancient Greece was famous for its forests. These survive now only in the northern regions. Apparently the forests were cleared in ancient times to make room for the sacred olive trees. In addition, the grazing of goats, firewood gathering, shipbuilding, housing and industry all took their toll. Without the surface roots of the native forest, soil erosion has been a major problem in the hilly areas.

After crossing the first set of mountains, we passed quickly through the ugly all-concrete city of Tripolis, then drove through the farmland of a central valley. Just to get the feel of a small town, we detoured for a couple kilometers to see the town named Πυγαδακια, or Pygadakia, which we didn't try to translate. We parked by the town fountain and walked a dirt lane toward a little farmhouse; we were greeted by a couple of plump turkeys that did a sort of strut-gobble dance as we traversed their turf. Along the way we drew a couple stares from human residents as well, probably wondering what two strangers in an automobile were doing in their town.

Beyond Pygadakia we climbed some more mountains and stopped at another small town on the road for a pit stop and a Greek coffee. A little farther along I noticed an old woman walking along the road, and I stopped the car as she waved us down, recalling other elderly hitchhikers we had transported in Crete. The woman said she was going to Sparti, and, looking at Maryl, asked, in Greek, if we were Japanese—or perhaps Filipino. Maryl explained that, no, we were from America, but that her ancestors were from Portugal. The conversation didn't get much farther. We arrived at Sparta and dropped the woman off at a location she designated near the center of town. There seemed to be a lot more life in this town, perhaps because it was now mid-after­noon. There were many cars and lots of people on the streets. (I wonder now, had the invisible people missing from all the small towns been cloistered at home watching the sacred Rose Parade or bowl games on television?) We had come a mere 130 kilometers from Nafplio (about 80 miles), but it seemed like twice the distance and had taken over three hours. We quickly selected a hotel from the guidebook, the Maniatis, one of two that were centrally located. We were given a fifth-floor room with a small balcony and a panoramic view of the city and the snow-capped crest of Mt. Taÿgetos to the west.

To our delight we found the plaza nearby, where there was a restaurant with outdoor tables and lots of patrons. It met all the criteria, so we sat down for a meal. The sunshine felt soothingly warm, and the mezedes we selected were good: the sausages were spicy, the skordalia had a nice garlicky bite, and the calamaraki was crisp and tasty. For the first time on this trip the warm weather drove me to try one of the few available beers, a half liter of a German lager whose name I had never heard. It turned out to be the ideal accompaniment to this pleasurable repast. The lodging and provisions here were far from Spartan.

Of all the places we visited, we were lucky to come to Sparta on a holiday. The ancient Acropolis of Sparta, a mere three blocks from our hotel, was not closed. There was no admission gate; in fact, no fences at all. I was pleased to be able to walk freely among the remains of a theater from 200 BC in this famous city, but at the same time it disturbed me to see children riding trail bikes and motor­scooters among the ancient stones. Evidently ancient Sparta, placing its emphasis on military training, didn't leave architecture of quality to rival that of the sites that are better protected today. Writing in the late 5th century BC, the historian Thucydides (as quoted in the Lonely Planet guide) could already foresee a distant future: “If the city of the [Spartans] were destroyed, and only its temples and the foundations of its buildings left, remote posterity would greatly doubt whether their power were ever equal to their renown.”