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.