A UNIQUE LOCAL TRADITION THAT YOU CAN SEE ONLY ONCE A YEAR

In the small village of Kastraki, which is surrounded by the imposing rocks of Meteora, every year after Easter a unique tradition, allover Greece, takes place.

The day of the celebration of St. George (April 23) all the villagers gather early in the morning underneath a cave. If you look carefully you will see them holding colorful scarfs and a few others gathering them and tying them around their belts. When their belts are full with scarfs they head to the bottom of the rock, they grab the ropes and they start to pull themselves up.

In the middle of that rock you can see a cave with a few ruins inside and more scarfs hanging in there, then you see the climbers with their colorful skirt of scarfs entering that cave and suddenly you hear them singing and dancing. After that they replace the old scarfs with the new ones they brought up there.

Finally you see them starting to come down with the old scarfs and people gathering closer, reaching out their hands to them and then you see them leaving happy with a fainted small piece of a scarf.

At the end of the mass they all gather in the square of the village and they start singing and dancing in circles.

It’s a tradition that started back in the Ottoman times, the legend says that a couple of Turks went underneath the chapel of St. George to cut wood for the fire. Suddenly a tree fell and injured the man badly and his wife even though she was Muslim she prayed to St. George and immediately her husband healed, then she offered the most precious thing she had, her hijab. Nowadays we offer scarfs in exchange for good health and we keep the old scarfs as talismans.

Grab the opportunity to experience some off our local traditions and Trust Us to organize a trip that you will never forget..!