Jeep Safari around the beautiful places of Agistro.
- 24276 reads
We got into the legendary Suzuki Jimny and started a mini road trip with no certain destination or ideas, as we always prefer to ask the locals to lead us to the beauties of their home place.
At Siderokastro.
So we left from Agistro and after a few kilometers we found ourselves at Siderokastro a truly strange place which was known as a very wealthy place at the decades of 80-90 and then lost its glamour. Unseasonable buildings, "cult" to not say worse, structures within the confluents of Strimonas, architecture without cohesion and meaning. At 3 we were looking for a cafe to rest and we found none open but one, the Alchimeion. We asked the waitress and she told us to visit the Byzantine castle and the waterfalls of Hot Waters, so we kept with our road trip.
The Byzantine castle of Siderokastro
The Byzantine castle looks impressive, on a hill 155 meters above the town of Sidirokastro. For the first time there was built a castle Under Justinian in 527 A.D. Its fortification has been strengthened by the Bulgaroctonοs king at the 11th century and was completed by the Andronicus C' the Palaiontologo (1326-1341). From the panoramic view of the castle, we saw throughout the city and a large part of Serraikos valley, with the Strimonas River and the Kerkini Lake. We really liked it!
The Waterfalls of hot water.
After the Byzantine castle we chose to go back to the Agistro from the provincial road since we had a Jimny with 4x4. On our way we found a sign for the Waterfalls of Hot Water, we left the car and we went down to the water guided from its sound. There was the waterfall, tall and nice, falling down in a round lagoon.They say that its water is hot, but we weren't able to catch it and right behind it there's a 130m length cave which is an underground river with stalactites and many bats. What was striking was that the waters of the waterfall were united with the waters of the river Krousoviti, which were coming towards the waterfall from the exact opposite direction and disappeared into the lagoon of the waterfall. Very impressive and I would certainly like to take a dive there in the summer!
Then Achladohori and Kapnofyto
Two beautiful villages in which we had a walk for sightseeing but also to find something to eat, but we noticed that the taverns open after 7pm, so we left hungry.
An hour before the nightfall.
We felt like explorers that day and chose to go off the beaten track, so we left Achladohori and headed towards Agistro taking the provincial road. We had 1 hour ahead of us to get there before the nightfall and we were aware from the locals that the road was slipping due to the recent rainfalls. It seemed that the road was fine for a 4x4 up to a place called "Tres Vrises" an abandoned billeting place, in which there is still the mansion of Papadopoulos (yes the dictator). The downhill to the Agistro was a bit dangerous and it needed a skilful driver and four-wheel drive. I still wonder how I didn' t die from panic. Thank god i had my man with me!
leave a comment