The fountain, just outside Pano Kardamyli under the vadia, supplied the village with water until the 1960s. Now the water is just a trickle and birds and butterflies drink from pools that gather in the shadows. An inscription in Greek from 1734 records: ‘At the expense of Panayoiti the Troupaki his father Mikhail Paleologho and his son Petros’ It encouraged some to claim that the Mourtzinos-Troupaki tribe were descendants of the Paleologi family, the last Emperors of Byzantium – Patrick Leigh Fermor weaves an ouzo fuelled fantasy around this in Mani – Travels in the Southern Peloponnese. Sitting on scented leaves under the silver-trunked eucalyptus, listening to the drowsy buzz of the cicadas, anything seems possible.
Photo: Fountain, Pano Kardamyli, Kardamyli, Greece, June 2010