Alónisos – haro's Maps
Old Alónisos, or The
Old Village
seen from the saddle of Káto Choráfi.
Why I made these maps
When my family stranded
in Patitíri, Alónisos, for the first time in summer 1986, my sons
were
four and six years old. All we wanted was to find a few beaches to keep them
busy, preferably
not too crowded and within a kindergartner's foot-walk range from Patitíri.
Immediately after our
arrival, I bought three maps in "downtown" Patitíri, all of
them very colorful
and nicely made. The same evening I started carefully studying them. The very
first glance
showed me that there were staggering differences between the maps. Even the
shoreline differed
not only in details. Some maps showed mountains, coves and peninsulas where
there weren't any
on other maps, and vice versa.
Anyway, on two of the
maps I found what was labeled a "Sandy Beach" close to the little
village of Vótsi. That sounded inviting. The next day we set off for
Vótsi, on foot, with flippers,
diving masks, snorkels and my underwater camera in our rucksacks.
Our little hike was
a disaster. Intersections and forks didn't bear any resemblance to their
representation on the maps. Instead of having a nice swim we got stuck in a
blackberry jungle
in a dense forest high above the shore, with occasional glimpses of the sparkling
water down
below, as if to tease us, and that with two kids who were yearning for a swim.
Family mutiny
was just around the corner, and my reputation as an excellent map reader was
on stake.
Back in Patitíri
I bought more maps. Again no similarity, neither to each other nor to reality.
Some maps showed roads and even villages where there was only virgin forest,
while other
roads, obviously pretty old ones even, didn't figure on any map. One map showed
the OId Village
on top of Mount Kalóvoulos, while others had moved it down to the sea
shore, a difference of
a mile and a half - on an island that is only two miles wide, mind you.
I came to the conclusion
that all those maps were a mixture of hearsay, fantasy, wishful
thinking, and folklore, absolutely unsuitable for serious use. If I wanted to
take my kids to
interesting places, I had to scout them myself.
The next day I began
charting the southern part of the island, with nothing more than a note pad,
a pencil, a rubber and my wrist-watch to ascertain the cardinal points using
the sun. I walked
250 miles in two weeks and recorded every step. I also drew a pretty detailed
map of Vótsi,
without real measurements, just using eyeball judgement.
The rough drafts were
turned into proper fiber-pen drawings after my return to Switzerland.
In spring 1987 I sent copies to Pákis Athanasíou of Ikos Travel
in Patitíri. They were the hit
of that summer on the island, as I learned when I arrived for my second vacation,
armed with
a precision prism diopter compass, aka artillery compass, ready to start making
more
accurate measurements than by just counting steps.
I had absolutely no
practical experience in making maps, but I was confident my knowledge of
trigonometry - not used since high school - would help me. The result of my
second vacation
on the island, apart from a pair of worn-down hiking shoes due to another 300
miles on the
hoof, was a set of more than 1500 bearings and distance measurements. They were
used to
draw a fairly accurate map of the southern part of Alónisos over the
following winter.
In summer 1988, Pákis
published those simple but reliable black-and white maps. They
went like hot cakes. Many vacationers seemed to have been waiting just for a
means to
discover the island on foot without putting their pants or even more at risk.
My mailbox got
flooded with thankyou letters from all over Europe. Encouraged, I also made
a map of the
densely populated area of Patitíri, Vótsi and the Old Village,
which was published in 1989,
followed by a map of the whole island in 1990.
Oh, by the way, during
my thorough surveying of the whole island I fairly soon realized that
only one of the 22 "Sandy Beaches" charted in most of those commercially
available maps
does have real sand. Most of the others are covered with pebbles, sized between
a pigeon's
egg and a grapefruit. As I stated above: wishful thinking....
In the second half of
the 'nineties, after having updated the maps year by year, I digitized
them and made a new set, more accurate, more detailed, and easier to update
than with
with the fiber-pen-and-protractor technique used so far. Unfortunately, because
of all the
hassle with the boat I didn't have much time for keeping the maps up to date.
Before the
purchase of the boat, I updated even chicken coops and outhouses on an annual
basis.
That is not the case any more. Owning a wooden boat is a full time job, and
owning a
wooden boat in Greece is a lifetime commitment.
By the way, the past
few years saw the publication of some pretty good maps of Alónisos,
really much better than the ones that pushed me into the charting trade; a real
progress.
But beware; in the stores on the island you can still find maps that are not
worth the paper
on which they are printed.
The map files below
are in .pdf (portable document format), viewable with Acrobat Reader.
You can zoom in to see the details. Sorry, black-and-white only, because we
had to
keep production costs low - originally the maps were just photo-copied.
Please note that these
maps are not meant for being hard-copied. The original paper
size is A3 (419.8 x 297.0 mm), and only few people have such big printers. Even
those who have one may encounter difficulties while trying to print the maps
accurately to scale. Furthermore, the resolution of the original maps would
result
in a file size that makes a download through an analog modem almost impossible.
So these sheets are presented here in a reduced quality. Even so downloading
may take quite a while without a broadband Internet access.
Needless to say the
maps are copyright and any commercially oriented use of the
files will be prosecuted.
The original maps are
available at
Ikos Travel at the waterfront
in Patitiri.
Just say hello to Pákis Athanasíou and his crew from me.
So here are the map files:
Town Map Patitíri, Vótsi and the Old Village, scale 1: 5,000
Sorry folks, this map is still a pretty rough hand-drawn version.
Maybe some day I'll have time to make a fully digitized version.
Last update June 22, 2004
© Copyright 2004 Hans Joerg Rothenberger, CH-8880 Walenstadt, Switzerland.