The Greek name for this southernmost tip of the Peloponnese is linked to a Byzantine fort at Cape Tigani (called Megali Maina), but it may well also draw on the region’s desolate, mountainous rocky country that persists throughout the entire peninsula.
The fierce Maniot people were well described by Patrick Leigh Fermor in his book Mani (1958), but the region has been more recently celebrated in Charles Foster’s brilliant The Edges of the World, published in January. In history the Mani was known variously for the relentless and sometimes centuries-long vendettas between its local clans, as a fertile recruiting ground for Mediterranean piracy and as an early outpost for Greek liberation from Ottoman rule.
What a reputation for violence and stone-reflected heat cannot easily conjure is the Mani’s equal renown for spring flowers of astonishing richness. The ancient field system of miniature stone-walled plots planted up with olive, almond, fig and carob trees looks to have been an exercise in monumental labour and almost fruitless rearrangement of the super-abundant rock. Yet in a curious way, this same moonscape looks predesigned to set off by contrast the area’s floral softness and colour.
We scoured the length of the coast, endlessly re-amazed at the abundance of flowers. What’s so compelling is the way that these collective millions self-choreograph in a slow rotational ballet as every flowerhead tracks the position of the sun. At pre-dawn, I noticed how most blooms had ended their day-dance facing west, but within minutes of our star’s reappearance on the eastern horizon, they’d all done a 180-degree tilt to begin again.
At a spot called Drosopigi, we marvelled at the way a single white-flowered daisy species, Chios chamomile, was at our feet, but also winding down the mountain road on both sides, continuing around each bend and finally deviating and spreading across a broad disused track, where it so filled the ancient path that it presented as a solid plain of white petals – a pattern so extensive and beautiful that I’m guessing it would have offered a striking vision to any observant passenger on a passing aeroplane.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com
