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.