Wednesday 10 June 2009

Monday trip to Rouvas Gorge




Following a chat with a lovely German couple at the hotel in Malia, Rosemary and I threw caution to the wind and took ourselves off to the Psiloritis mountains to try to find a rare and endangered orchid Cephelantera cucullata. This lovely little orchid is extremely difficult to find and the kind Germans had told us it was in flower and where to find it. After several missed turnings in the mountains, which did mean we found lots of other interesting stuff, we ended up in the right place. We would never have found it, however, if it hadn't been for a noisy party of Greek men and boys who we encountered on our travels and who, as luck would have it, were going to the very spot to have a picnic!! We followed their trucks down some very bad dirt tracks through some spectacular scenery and ended up exactly where we needed to be. A short stroll into the forest led Rosemary and then me to the object of the trek. I was so excited I was on the verge of an asthma attack and, unfortunately, the camera chose that point to play up, so my photos aren't great! After a continued search we decided it was time to head home. Not far back up the track, Rosemary spotted more orchids behind the 'reserve' fence and we managed to get some shots of Limodorum arbortivum, but sadly too far away to get a decent shot. However, as we are so proud of ourselves for actually finding them, here are a couple of images. After a few diversions for road works, we got back to Elounda while it was still light and in time for Rosemary to have dinner with Bob! Me, I cooked myself a very basic corned beef hash and settled down to gloat over the photos and the day with my feet up. Very satisfying!

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a good day Julia, I must say that Psiloritis sounds like a bad skin condition!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Couldn't agree with you more about the name, but the scenery there is absolutely stunning. I've added the trip to my flower finding excursions - it was a fabulous day out.

    ReplyDelete