Why People Come to Greece (Santorini/ Naxos, Greece)

Santorini is the tourist blockbuster. It’s Greece’s main event, and the head lining act of all the Greek Islands. And because of this I tried not to let it be the highlight of my stay in Greece. I went in biased because it’s so utterly overdone. But I was helpless against its appeal. I’m ashamed to say that, yes, Santorini was the absolute highlight of my two months in Greece.

I should have known I was going to like it so much – it’s a goddam volcano! The landscape is just amazing, and a hike I did along the cliff tops looking down over the caldera on my first afternoon will stay with me forever. It was truly epic. The hike took three hours, and I took a photo every two or three minutes.

The trail finished at a town called Oia, which has a world famous sun set. Like Santorini, I was expecting the sunset to be disappointing– you know what hype does. But holy shit, it was the best dam sunset I have ever seen, framed nicely by an old windwill perched on the cliff top.

The towns in Santorini clings to the cliffs, and combined with the landscape it all looks like it could be the setting of some sci fi movie set on another plant. It’s just so unique, so unlike anywhere I've seen the world over.

 

 

Here I cauifght up my friend Carol, who I had met on the Russia to Turkey leg of my trip. She is a pharmacy owner who is travelling for an extended period like me and by coincidence we were in Greece at the same time so we arranged to meet in Santorini. It was great to talk to someone familiar again, especially after my solitude in Crete, and we had a great couple of days together, seeing the island, watching sunsets, watching moon rises, and drinking local wine. This trip has been great for meeting and becoming friends with people I would otherwise never have a chance of befriending in ordinary life.

 

 

We did a tour out to the freshly formed (2000 y.o.)  crater and swam in some hot springs from the thermal energy of the volcano (photo of me on crater, photo of crater below). We didn’t catch the donkeys back up the cliff – spared ourselves and the donkeys the indignity (and us some money), by legging it up one painful step at a time.

 

 

On the other side of Crete are some great, tranquil beaches, one of which abuted a cliff which I climbed higher and higher for a place to jump off. Stung the feet and bruised my bum, had salt water rush up into my nose and down my throat like a burning a spirit, but it was great fun (in the photo below I look like I'm standing but I'm in mid air).

Santorini was a tough act follow, but Naxos, an island to the north of it and one I chose to visit purely because it had a X in its name, was a real surprise. More surprising was how nice the $22 a night accomadation was, and that the hotel owner was waiting for me at the port to show me to the place!

Naxos town was pretty, with an old venetian castle remnants in the middle and the nicest ‘old town’ ive seen all year. And ive seen more ‘old towns’ this year than I can remember. It was like a labyrinth of narrow streets and little tunnels and of course the standard blue and white Greek colour code. Also cool was the ruin of just the doorway to a great hall which sits on a bluff next to the town and looks over the Mediterranean.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One day I got the bus up into the mountains and walked around quite country roads and along narrow paddocvk alleys through a series of villiages. These alleys were fences by old rocks and looked like they could have been the same 1000 years ago. Also, my exploring took me through tunnels, past olive groves and grape fields, past ancient abandoned churches that jumped out at me suddelnlyfrom behind tree’s, and to several quaint villages with their own character. It was all as real and as untouched by tourists as Greece gets, as Naxos is large enough to sustain an agricultural industry.

 

Naxos ended up being the perfect desert to the main course of Santorini, and a perfect way to end my two month trip around Greece.

 

 

 

Covering Crete Part 2 (Crete, Greece)

After sleeping in a room with 8 other people I was especially glad to get to the apartment I rented for a month. It was located on the north coast, a short bus ride from Crete’s capital, and a stone’s throw away from the beach. I rented for the duration of a month for several reasons;

A)     My life was becoming a blur and I needed to settle in one place and regather myself.

B)      I had to sit down and plan what I would be doing next, and bring myself to do the feared ‘budget review.’

C)      It was incredibly cheap to rent for length of one month.

The beach was hardly the nicest beach on Crete, but at least it was interesting. It was anti-pristine, and I liked that about it. Down one end was a big energy plant literary on the sand, and at the other end was a big abandoned looking stadium, also as close to the waves. It was like something out a Bruce Springsteen song, the glory days gone, replaced by record unemployment rates and a feeling that things in the future will never be as good as they were in the past. Unfinished buildings were common and signalled the Greece's failed economy.




While there I visited the nearby town of Heraklion, with the biggest breakwall I have ever seen in my life. It took an hour to go to the end and back.

 

I also checked out some nearby ruins which were nearly 4000 years old, and home of the Minotaur, half man half bull that used to walk a lap of Crete once per day as its protector.

The month went by quickly, as I knew it would. I had a few dramas including run ins with stray dogs, my insurance expiring so being holed up in the room until I got it sorted, trying to live as cheap as possible. I sat at my computer with my budget and the world map in mind for entire days at a time. My planning got my head in such a tangled state that I actually booked two tickets on the same flight through different companies (I couldn’t believe it when I got refunded by one). Also, I was able to skype Rin constantly and get caught up on some writing.

It wasn’t my most exciting month, but it was…necessary.

When I finally got back on the road I felt like a racing greyhound when the gates open,  and I was desperate to meet and talk to new people after laying low for a month.  
I stayed in Malia, which I called the two face town. To one side of the main road was a quaint and peaceful old town with narrow cobbled streets and picturesque buildings and apartments. Just across the main road was the exact opposite; bars, tacky restaurants, fast food, tourist shops, everything. It is a popular destination for British teens to come and have a wild week. It was so trashy that it was actually interesting. Bar after bar, tattoo shops with photo’s of drunk teens dumbly smiling into the camera showing off their ‘spontaneous’ holiday tattoo, street legal quads stopping and starting and skidding all over the place unaware of local road rules. The locals must hate these people, but I guess they bring money when nothing else does these days, so they smile politely. Like Bali for the dumbest Australians I guess.
 
Off the coastline of Malia was a small island with a typical white church. The things about the Greeks is, they love putting churches in hard to get places. It was a bit of a swim from the beach, but I managed to get out to it.

The final and my most eastern reach of  Crete was Agios Nikolas, my favourite town on the island. Right in the middle of town is a bizarre, oddly deep lake, which the Greek goddess Athena is said to have bathed in. From here I caught a boat up the west coast and went for a ‘sea swim’ before exploring a small island with ancient ruins which was used to hold the lepers of Greece up until the 1950’s.

 

I spent a long time in Crete, and got to see a lot of it. But like anywhere, the more you see the more you realise there’s always just a little bit more around the bend that you won’t be able to get to see this time. You can’t do everything. Not even the people who live on Crete will do it all. But I think I was fair to Crete and myself, and covered it well.


 

Covering Crete Part 1 (Crete, Greece)

I arrived in Crete miserable. I had got an overnight ferry from Athens, and the staff wouldn’t let anyone lie down across the chairs. I managed to get a couple of hours sleep laying in a narrow hallway outside the cabin rooms where people were inside sleeping in comfort, and I felt like a homeless person not for the first time this year.

Crete is the southern most of all of Greece’s islands, and also the biggest. I would cover it over the course of about 7 weeks, starting in the west and ending in the east. Crete is characterised by enormous barren mountains, pristine coastlines, small fertile valleys with olive groves and grapes, and quaint towns and villages.

I started in Chania, an old venetian town that surprised me so much that I temporarily forgot about how tired and hot and hungry I was.  It was the first of several venetian towns I would hit on Crete’s north coast. I especially like the long breakwalled port the venetians build, going out into the sea and curving around to run parallel with the coastline.

Next I did an 18km hike down Europe’s biggest gorge. I caught a bus to the top and the only way out at the bottom was by boat along the south coast to another town connected by road to the rest of the island. The walk was a challenge but good, and the gorge was truly epic. It was great to be trekking along in the middle of nowhere by myself. Christopher McCandles would be proud.

The funny thing about Crete is there are no dangerous animals. There were at one stage, scientists can prove this, but the story goes that Hercules got rid of them all. He killed all the boars, poisonous snakes and whatever else might do me harm in the middle of the bush alone. So thanks Hercules!

When I finally got to the bottom of the gorge I was just in time to see the boat leave – a few less photo’s on the way and I would have caught it. I was devastated to learn the next one was in five hours. But missing the boat turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I regathered my energy and climbed up a mountain to an old ruin, and that ended up being a highlight of the day.

When the next boat did arrive five hours later it cruised us along the south coast of Crete in the Libyan Sea and it’s something I will never forget. The mountains that met the sea were so epic and barren that I’ve never seen a landscape like it. This part of Crete is affected by a North African climate, and looks like no other part of Greece, or anywhere I’ve seen this year. We passed these tiny towns, with no road access, just a handful of little white buildings almost lost is the epic landscape, until finally coming to one with a road up the steep cliffs which I caught a bus home.

The next day I did a boat trip up to a small island and a lagoon that was so remote it couldn’t be accessed by vehicle. The island had a big ruined fort on top of it that looked like a kings on a crowns head. This island overlooked Balos lagoon, which is considered one of the Top Ten European beaches. And although I haven’t seen all of Europes beaches, I’ve certainly seen a few around the Mediterranean this year, and I’ll say I couldn’t image there being a nicer one. The great thing about it was these fresh, tropical looking turquoise waters juxtaposed with the harsh and barren Cretan landscape.

 

 

Again on the rugged south coast of Crete, I stayed at a town called Paleochora. It was the first apartment that I booked and it was so nice to be able to cook for myself and do some washing. This part of Crete was especially bare, just like the nudists on a remote beach I accidently stumbled across.

I also stayed at a small town called Georgiopolis and its most notable feature was a small church build on some rocks out from the coastline, reachable only by a small breakwall walkway which waves washed over. These Greeks love putting churches in obscure places.

 

 

Next Rethymno, another venetian town, and then to Plakias. It was here that I stayed a week in a dorm in the middle of an olive grove. It was a great experience, and I got to meet a lot of people and make good friends with a Canadian couple. We spent our time beaching, hiking up rivers (below), drinking cheap local beer and eating gyros. On my last night we did a big cook up together, making Greek salad and rice and roasted meat and drinking the local wine and spirit (raki).  It was uncomfortably hot in the 8 person room, and by the end I was craving my person space, but I’m so glad I stayed there.

In my first few weeks in Crete I did and saw amazing things, and it all looks pretty perfect here, but in the moments between I was hot and exhausted, and homesickness came on suddenly. Extreme highs on climbing to the top of a mountain and overlooking the surreal landscape were soon followed by intense lows when I wished I wasn’t so hot and uncomfortable and wished I could afford better accommodation or a proper meal and had someone to talk to. And this was in Greece, where I didn’t have to consider safety!

A lot of this year has felt like the Charles Dickens quote; ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ And doing what I'm doing is a guaranteed way to get both.