Chromatodromos means "dirt road". As we have been using a TomTom navigator of Greece, we have found that many of these dirt roads are unavoidable and major connectors between smaller villages. While collecting the waters, we drove over a few of them and thought them perfectly adequate. Yesterday, to avoid a 10km detour, we took one from one arm of the Bay of Pylos to the other. That may have involved a little more coaxing and rationalization ("See, there are only one set of tire tracks in the road, which means the car got through.") and slower speeds to avoid the larger ruts.
Today, as we continued on to Mystras, Iris (what we have named the TomTom) seemed determined that we experience another chromatodromos. The first one looked too specious, much like what we saw at Alifira before we decided to park and walk. The second looked more promising.
Turning down a one lane road between olive groves which abutted the edges of the car practically, we continued on for about half a kilometer before a tiny rivulet joined our intended path. Ok. It's just a little water, and shortly thereafter, the water crossed the road. The next challenge was a rather steep descent, but as everyone knows, going down is easier than going up, and we weren't planning on coming out of Mystras this way. That was when we hit the standoff.
The chromatodromos was supposed to cross a river. Normally, this means that there is a bridge, but as we approached the last descent before the small stream, we saw that there was no bridge, nor was there ever a bridge. You were just supposed to drive down the 6' hill, drive through the 3" of water that was about 4' wide and then drive up the other side of the hill.
Given our experiences with the other chromatodromos, we thought this was doable, even if we needed to turn right onto the river bank and then swing around to approach the other hill at a more oblique angle. It's not clear to either of us exactly why we thought this a good idea.
So, Randall got into the car, and I stood on the bank, and directed the descent. That was when we realized that the profile of the front end of the car was too low and effectively, the front end was plowing the river bed, not clearing it. And now the car had no traction to go back up the hill. Yes, dear readers, we had managed to get the car stuck at a 30 degree angle.
I immediately set about removing rocks and dirt around the front end to see if we could clear out the river bank enough to let the car finish clearing. I found a couple of good flat rocks and used them as shovels, and kept digging up bigger rocks which I threw off to the sides and in the river. Meanwhile, Randall was looking for ways to provide traction to the front wheels. We found some pieces of old concrete, which had likely once been some bit of paving on the slopes of the hill, but we couldn't wedge them well enough to do any good. Randall then got the brillant idea to use the jack and lift the car up so we could dig under the wheel and wedge the concrete better. I went back to grading the river bank. I got it down about 8" and then suggested after then next unsuccessful attempt at reverse, to try going forward again. That did it!
We now had the car wheels propped on the lowered bank and the bottom of the hill and about 8" under the car, so we dragged over larger concrete road segments and put them at the back of the front wheels on both sides. Randall was then able to back the car up the slope with me guiding, and we did a quick 5 point turn around and barreled out of this chromatodromos, grateful to get the car and us out safely.
So, this leaves us with an important safety tip about driving in Greece: Avoid the chromatodromos unless (a) you're in a 4x4, (b) that you don't personally own, and (c) that you have someone along to help you dig yourself out. We shall be avoiding all but the absolutely essential ones for the remainder of the trip, and Randall is fervently hoping none are absolutely essential.
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