Life Through My Eyes: Last Port Of Call On Our 2015 Med Cruise

Today is Thursday, October 8th and we have come to our last port of call of our cruise....Katakolon, Greece. We had been here on a previous cruise. On that cruise we had found little of interest in Katakolon but this visit was much different. There were all kinds of sights that we did not experience previously. We really enjoyed our visit to Katakolon this time. Katakolon is also used as a port of call and gateway to Olympia to several cruise lines. During our visit we discovered that the economy in Greece and specifically Katakolon had taken a downward turn. Because of the economic challenges of the Greek government we found trash and garbage piled high in some locations and kids were out of school. As it turns out the government did not have the money to pay for the normal garbage pickups and disposal along with no school for the kids because there was no money to pay the teachers. The garbage issue was not present everywhere but where it was present it appeared in a big way. But despite the garbage issue Katakolon was a really cool place and we met some very nice people there. Below are some photos of our visit to Katakolon:

Arriving in the port of Katakolon the harbor was fairly busy

There were a couple of cruise ships already docked in the harbor

Before we left the ship we saw this young man getting ready for a days work of painting balconies on our ship

As you first enter onto the main street in Katakolon tourists are greeted with offers of various tours and rental vehicles

The main street in Katakolon

An old Citroen

We took a ride on one of those "fun trains" ..kind of like a Thomas The Train sort of thing. Took us around the area

Below is a wine business. We could have got off here and picked up the next train, which would have been in 30 minutes but we decided to stay on our train

Some type of wine pressing machine

Here are the piles of trash that I had mentioned earlier. The government has no money to pay the sanitation engineers so the trash just piles up until the economy gets better

Here is our train. There was a spot in our route where the train was making a turn and there was an incline. The train could not make it up this incline so the people from the last 2 cars, which were us, had to get out of the car and literally push the train up this incline. Everyone was laughing and having a good time while pushing the train