Turley Family News Europe: Crete

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We arrived in Sitia, Crete at about 2 am. We were a little supprised to find that the town was very much awake and going. I don't think the little inexpensive pensions were open but we found a suitable hotel at a fair price. The next morning we would have liked to go to Zakros where the pan europe E4 trail is supposed to end but buses only go there twice a week. We had hoped to find maps for the trail at a bookstore or tourist info center but had had no luck. We settled for a 2:30 pm bus to Palekestro, a town about 20 km away from Zakros which our guide described as a pretty greek farming village. On arriving I (Denise) didn't feel that city in front of us qualified as a village or pretty so we decided to hike/hitch to Zakros 15 km away. We found rides much harder to get than in Karpathos but finally a questionable character in a beat up car kindly picked us up. As it turned out, I think a variety of miscommunications occurred during the ride, our driver was the owner of the only hotel in Zakros and it was full of itinerant oliver harvesters from Albania. He offered to set us up with housing with a friend of his, which we were pretty uncomfortable with based on how he seemed but agreed to because we thought it might be the only option available. He dropped us off at his hotel (a real dive), told us to wait and then didn't return for another three hours and when he did, said he'd give his friend a call but then proceeded to smoke and drink with friends in his hotel cafe. We'd been frustrated that we'd said we'd wait hours before but didn't want to disappear if he was going to a lot of trouble for us . . . at this point we felt free from any committments we may have made (language barrier being what it was) and crossed the street and made some phone calls from the minimart there. We got in contact with a property owner in Kato Zakros just a few miles away and she came to pick us up (it was well after dark at this point). I had begun to doubt my fall back philosophy that things happen for a reason and that everything tends to turn out pretty well in the end if you can be patient and look for opportunities . . .but happily embraced it again when it turned out that our hostess, stella, and her husband were serious trekkers, had the maps we wanted and were prepared to give us any trail info that we needed to get started. The apartments were brand new and beautifully designed with views of both the gorge and the ocean, had heat and lots of hot water, and decent cooking facilities. Our hostess brought us in a basket of their homegrown oranges and lemons and a flask of olive oil just pressed from their family grove.

At 60 Euros, the price was about triple what we try to spend on rooms, but we decided to overlook that and just enjoy having a beautiful place to stay.

Our apartment at Kato Zakros.

The next day we did two hikes, one a large loop going up a hill and down to the ocean and returning to our beach along the shore. We stopped at a cave along the way (stella had warned us to bring lights) and spent about 1 1/2 hours climbing down into it and looking at cave formations. John went down a difficult way at first, and I was prepared to just wait for him, but when he hadn't returned after fifteen minutes I decided to put some more effort into finding a route that I could safely follow and found an area of rocks with no serious falling hazard in a corner that I could get down. John and I met up eventually near the bottom of the cave . . .there was one room that I didn't explore that he had, but I was tired of breathing cave dust by then and he assured me that the formations weren't any more impressive than the ones I'd seen (which were the nicest I've ever seen in a "wild" cave . . .enormous, varied and everywhere). People had attached strings in various parts of the cave to help people find their way to the entrance again, although I had payed carefull attention to my route, it was reassuring to see them on the way back and know that I hadn't gotten mixed up yet.

Our next hike was up an amazing cave filled gorge up to Zakros. We selected an alternate route at the end and ended up climbing on a steel attachments that stella's husband had set into the gorge wall to get past a steep section. All very fun. We bought good groceries in Zakros and hiked down (getting back after dark) to fix our meal in our luxurious little cabin.

Olives are knocked off the trees with these poles. There is a power head with spinning rubber fingers on the end of the pole. The olives are all caught with the green nylon tarps.

This is the strongest chicken coop ever.

The next day was super stormy and the gorge flooded, crossing the road and making it impassable to begin the next section of our hike (we could have waded after the worst of it . . .but there is so much goat poo everywhere and the floodwaters stunk of it . . .I didn't want to wade in it at all). We hung out and read a novel together, watching the view of the storm from our windows and taking breaks to make and eat our lentil and chicken concoctions. In all, an enjoyable and relaxing day.

The view from our apartment.

Water across the road.

It only rained a little the following day, but it was super windy. We hiked back out to Paleakastra following a track along the shoreline. It killed me to pass beautiful snorkeling beaches that were way too turbulent and silty to enjoy.

John's feet were pretty sore from the stony track when we got to the little village just before Paleakastra so I immediatly said yes to the first set of accomodations that we looked at, underrating how big of a deal it would be to have no heat. After freezing all night and waking up to a cold morning, we weren't motivated to hike but that was all there was to do for fun (the bus wouldn't come until the following day and we were feeling less like hitchhiking than usual and really didn't have anywhere good that we knew of to go anyway . . .) so we hiked all around the coast and looked at lots more great snorkeling spots that weren't good on that day (wind and cold).

The coast of Crete

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Via Beach.

From crete

Palm forest. This is the only sizable forest of this particular type of palm anywhere.

From crete

Monday morning bright and early we caught our bus to sitia and immediately grabbed one on to heraklion. The smell of peoples' smoking and coffee breath, and heavy perfume use combined with a windy road kept me wishing I had a barf bag for the first couple of hours . . .but eventually the bus got its air system working a little and got rid of some of the stale air and life was better. Housing was very expensive in heraklion, so we ended up choosing to stay at the filthy youth hostel (no heat). We spent our time looking at ruins of Knossos and the museum (under renovations, so one room of about 50 artifacts) eating ice cream and waffles (heraklions redeeming feature) and walking all over the traffic congested city. The ruins were fun just in the fact that "everyone" is in agreement that the archeologist that saw to its rebuilding was using his imagination as much as what could be known to create various rooms, pillars and buildings. I have personally imagined that could be said of most rebuilding done on ruins that I have seen all over the world, but usually it is not written down on the interpretive signs :>

You can find practical little three wheeled vehicles all over.

From crete

Minoan Road.

From crete

Kossos

From crete

Knossos. This is where the minotare legindarily lived. It has been extensivly (and imaginativly) reconstructed by a British archiologist in the early 1900's.