Secrets in plein sight in the Shelter of Kunelochora (!)(Rabbit Land)

• 5 16 Oct 2020
• georgemyzalis

Secrets in plein sight in the Shelter of Kunelochora (!)(Rabbit Land)

Escape to an island can be an absolutely affordable process, as long as you know how to paddle! It is fun and at the same time fascinating to paddle, with a good friend and to be across, on the islet, which you have been gazing at since you were little and have wished to explore. But also as a grown up you have been wishing every time you walked on the coastal front from Voula to Vouliagmeni.

It is not difficult, just a half-hour “intense paddle” (in the return more due to currents). From the point of view of experience, however, as well as the enrichment in images that you gather, the experience is shocking!

And the surprises do not start with our arrival on the island, but much earlier when we come to meet a beautiful caretta-caretta sea turtle. We just approached her, she looked at us with her brown eyes, as if something was whistling at us, and she disappeared into the deep. So close to the urban environment, a caretta – caretta! The road to the bustling southern suburbs is clearly visible behind us. And so close to all this anthropocentric construction to meet such a creature.We did not manage to take a photo of her. And how to catch it!

Reaching the island, we left the kayak in a small cove. Adjacent boats, other small, other larger, are slightly rocked by the current with passengers smeared with sunny Attic sky.

We climb the rocks and walk first to the left and then following a path to the right. Rabbits are appearing out of nowhere on our path. Many rabbits of different colors. We feel a bit of “Alice in Wonderland”. Someone once had the brilliant idea to ​​leave a pair of rabbits here! They have built a colony as, naturally the island is a large gruyere with holes, hiding places and homes to these sweet mammals. Despite the fact that it tickles us a bit to play with them, we follow the landscaped cobblestone path, looking to locate the network of underground passages and wells. We have been informed from the book of our good friend Konstantinos Kyrimis “The Shelters of Attica” regarding this precise Shelter.

It is not at all difficult to locate it, since the fortified works redeemed by time are a great contradiction to the picturesque view that unfolds in front of us. Sky blue, blue-green of the sea that mixes in the shallows with the reefs and the rocky complexes of the island, bushy green vegetation, along with tamarisk trees. And a red floral rug spreads flat, around the gray – cold cement construction.

A fortification network with trenches, machine gun and cannon positions, observatories, which indicate an underground network of corridors and ammunition storage areas that communicate with the fortified surface locations, are quickly revealed.

We look for the entrance with the iron stairs of square shape. We turn on the torches and enter the labyrinthine network. A complex of carved underground corridors, tunnel passages, halls built with bricks, ventilation wells (full of garbage today), a tank, and an underground “window” overlooking the Saronic Gulf!

The approach to the “window” of the shelter is an epic moment. How could possibly a photographic lense capture what unfolds in our gaze! The feeling that you are hidden and observe the passage of unsuspecting passing boats makes you feel a bit weird. You look across the shore, the point, where many times passing-by you stood there and wished to be at the very point you stand right-now. Such a small distance from ashore, and yet, so far from everyday life.