A little exercise - Part 2 (Epicurus)

Yes, I am starting with Part 2, which was the second stop that day, rather than Part 1, because, well, I can write about this one faster.  You'll understand when we finally post Part I (Alifira), because it involves editing a satellite photograph from Google to map our path, which Randall has yet to finish.

Anyway...

Our second stop that day was Temple of Apollo Epicurus.  We arrived around 2pm, a bit concerned that we wouldn't have time to see the site properly if it closed at 3pm, but that was not the case.  As it turns out this site is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the precursor temple of the Parthenon, and it is open until 6pm.  Who knew?  What we didn't know is that it is under a tent--a really big tent, so you can only see it in pieces, which are being structurally shored by wood collars and scaffolding and clamps as they continue to restore the temple--very, very slowly.

The tent has been described as a temporary measure, installed in 1987, but the text of the plaques inside notes that in the "over 10 years" since the tent was installed...  huh?  yes, the text was written around the late 90's and 25 years later, the tent is now installed with sturdy concrete footers and steel cords, and nothing about the work sites around the temple looks "temporary".  They even note that as they dismantled the temple for the repair work, they diligently placed all the stones in the hills below the temple.  We saw that the wood had started to warp and rot, and there was significant grass and weeds.  These blocks are going nowhere.

As we were exploring the many levels and fields of "spare parts" as we have been calling them, we found a map detailing the grounds, and noting two "auxiliary archeological sites".  This was practically a red flag!  A spring and two temples, in what could not have been more diametrically opposed directions.  The spring was down a dried out river bed, some 100m into the valley, and the temples were at the top of a mountain plateau another 100m of near vertical ascent.  We did both.  And keep in mind that we did this after we had already climbed to the top of the acropolis in Alifira--this will seem like a more incredible adventure after Randall finishes editing that satellite photo.  

Here is an example of the "goat path" that we climbed down and then up, and the spring.  You can see one of the red arrows that we were following on the top of the center-most white stone (pointing theoretically NE, although it was showing the path into the valley, which was to the right and down).  

This is the spring.

Then, not being at all winded, we went the other direction, climbing through the old stone quarries, more dried out river beds and a couple of other vertical goat paths to the summit.

This is the view of the main archeological site from the summit.  The "spare parts" are laid out on the hills to the right of the tent.  The valley where the spring is is out of the picture, way off to the right.  And besides the amazing views from 1500+ feet elevation, we saw ancient temples to Artemis and Aphrodite:

The mound of stones on the right is the one to Aphrodite and the foundation under the trees to the left is to Artemis.  Yeah, they don't look like much to us either, but LOOK AT THE VIEW even as the clouds came over!