Metsovo Greece

God is speaking: ‘ Come children listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord… keep your tongue from evil…and lips from deception…

Psalm 34: 11, 13 some of Sandy’s words

And here is a Greek proverb:

The tongue has no bones, but bones it crushes.

Metsovo means bear. The village was once lived in by Vlach shepherd’s and you may still see a few. Their language is a dialect of Romanian and it is thought they are descendents of Roman settlers. However, most of them became more comfortably well off due to tax privileges by the Ottomans for protecting the Katara Pass, the route crossing the Pindos Mountains. Infact it became one of the region’s most important commercial centres but it still clings to its history as the village shops still sell a lot of handcrafted shepherds’ crooks.

The day we visited the village was teaming with people, visitors from Athens and surrounding towns were enjoying good food near fires in the restraunts. The mountains had low slung clouds and it was raining intermittently. We saw a camper in the main square so I went into the police station and asked if we could park there too. The answer :”No.” So we went a good way up the pass where we parked in a viewing bay.

Then to Bugzy. On my insistence we travelled higher. Personally my instincts said lower but there was a vast flat carpark for a ski club higher up and that is where we spent the night. There were two other vans by morning.

Here are some thoughts about bears.

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.

Margaret Atwood

The mountains have always been here, and in them, the bears.

Rick Bass

And now a pun:

Why did the bear need to take a break?

He just likes to paws and reflect sometimes.

I hope you can ‘paws’ if you need to.

Sandy 🙂