Gortys - a tricky location

We almost didn't go to this site.  I try to organize the archaeological sites in groups based on location at least 2 days in advance so that I can have some margin for moving sites to different days/groups either earlier or later.  This generally involves finding the site of Google maps, visually confirming via satellite photos that something is there, and now retesting to make sure I can recreate the directions on my iPhone.  The last was something new since a couple of times during this trip while I had been able to locate a site through a third-party website allegedly using Google maps, when I entered that name into my iPhone Google maps it claimed the site did not exist, or it started getting picky about whether I am using English spelling, one of 5 different Greek transliterations, or some other combination of numbers and symbols.  The truly annoying part is that once I figure out the Google maps "code" for a site, sometimes it will revert to what I was originally trying to enter!  But enter a church name, and it doesn't matter how you spell it, Google maps will find that every time! Anyway...

Gortys was a Level 4, located roughly in the center of the Peleponnese, so I was going to try to make that happen.  Unfortunately, I was having an impossible time locating it on Google maps, and I absolutely wouldn't drive that distance to hunt for it on twisting mountain roads.  About the first hour of my research was spent trying to figure out what spelling was being used in any combination for the transliterated name.  I finally settled on Gortyna, and found my "go to" website of archaeological sites which sent me to an amazing site--in Crete!  I kept insisting on Arcadia, or Megalopolis where it was later incorporated, but nothing.  I gave up for the night.

The next day, I had renewed stamina.  After all, this was a Level 4, which meant significant ruins, just not yet elevated to the level of major significance to the archaeological community.  A Wikipedia entry listed it as "near the road from Atsicholos to Elliniko", so I opened a Google map and put those two towns in to see what road it would suggest.  Well, it gave me two different twisting routes of between 10-13 km, which given the magnification I would use to scroll through both routes and the instruction of "near" would have encompassed hectares of land, so I abandoned that method.  After a little more wine, I regrouped and found a website of someone mentioning having visited the site, and (somewhat) helpfully providing a thumbnail of a map of its location.  It now appears to be somewhere in the region of Megalopolis, Dimitsana and Andritsaina, so back to Google maps to input these locations and compare to the "line" I created with the others.  Remember, though, each time I input a new Greek town name, I have to deal with Google maps spelling issues...   Still much too much area.  My Atlas, however, includes some of the main roads (unlabeled), but I can trace the curves as they roughly match reality.  After about two hours and a bottle of wine, success!  And Ekklisia Agios Andreas is about 50m away from it, so I am sure to be able to find it when we drive there.

But it was worth the trouble and the 2 hour drive.  This is what you see first as you crest the hill:

Then from the other corner:

The Asklepion has been Romanized a bit into baths, and there are still some remnant reinforced terracotta-tiled and plastered walls, but the "bones" of this site are ancient Greek.  

But wait!  That's not all.  On the other side of the cleared path through the weeds was this:

This felt like a giant Lego structure, and we still have no idea what it was, or how it functioned.  There was a water channel around the inside, and some chambers which had no obvious entrance, but seemed wrongly placed just to be cisterns.  

This chamber is at least 5 courses of deep (we could count from the outside wall).

Just for scale.

Maybe this is the Temple to Asklepios, and the other area is the healing center?  Kind of wish I had a time machine.