In the days before asphalt roads and the advent of automobiles in the mountainous regions of Nafpaktos, mule-driving traders were plentiful, especially during the Turkish occupation. Traders would take their mules down to the nearest city, such as Nafpakto or Thermo, and carry back needed goods - and sometimes luxuries such as white soap and pretty trinkets for young women - to sell them or trade them in the isolated villages they visited with their burdened mules.

Each of these traders kept at least one or two mules in his stable, and took excellent care of his animals, because he obviously depended on them for his earnings. The traders would leave the village in large numbers, traveling together caravan-style; sometimes entire families and their mules would go along with them. They would leave by night, and reach the city just as dawn was breaking; all their purchases would be made during the day, and they'd leave for the village again by the next nightfall.

The bells ringing around the necks of the mules were joined by the bell-like voices of the single men and women - young adults - who rode them on these trips, which usually lasted six hours or more. They kept themselves busy by singing songs about love and heartache, and sang so merrily that people in the villages they passed on their way to Thermo or Nafpaktos wondered if Perista was a place untouched by the poverty and death that plagued their own villages. There are stories of many budding romances flourishing on trips such as these; one story holds that a young couple would repeatedly sneak to the back of the caravan, which resulted in the young man's losing his footing in the darkness. He slipped down the steep slope to the bank of the river Fidaris down below, but was lucky enough to land in a patch of sand and come away unharmed. He slipped into ... the bonds of holy matrimony just a few weeks later!

Mules and donkeys are now a rarity in Perista. A few villagers still keep donkeys to assist them in their agricultural needs, but the automobile and mass transit have eliminated the need for mule-drivers and traders. Those days and stories are now a part of a rich cultural past, not just of Perista, but of all the villages in the area.