“…Passing by you see Mani in 3 days, walking in 3 months and in order to see its soul you need 3 lives. One for the sea, one for its mountains and one for its people…”

Heart of the Peloponnese is the region known as the Mani. It has only very recently become easy to visit, and still has a stonily austere quality, which grows more powerful the deeper you, travel into the peninsula. When Patrick Leigh Fermor came here in the 1950s, he met people who had never before glimpsed anyone from outside the Mani. That has changed with the construction of a dramatic pass over the Taygetus Mountains.