The island of Crete-the "beginning"

Friday, 23^rd January

Crete - island of ancient sites, walks & herbs!

IN CRETE!!  What DREADFUL weather!  To make matters worse as we got underway there was a blockage on the national road by the Farmers who had been waiting unsuccessfully for their subsidies for some time from the Greek government.  This had, we learnt later, been going on for about 4 days.  This meant we had to return back the way we had come and try to find the alternative route hewed out of the mountainside for goats only.  Naturally the signs DIDN’T give us the name of the place we had been told to head for so using our human antennae we finally found the road.  Of course by the time we had got underway the traffic had increased and there were many holdups on the narrow mountain roads amidst wind and rain, it was all a great into to Crete for us! 

Finally by 10.30 am we had made our way back onto the national highway only 8 kms further up the road from the blockage!  Ha ha.

From there made good time to our destination in southern Crete called Mirthios, a tiny village overlooking Plakias.  We had booked the apartment for 5 weeks on the internet at a cheaper price than camping and wanting a rest from the van after 3 months.

It was a cute spot but the weather was terrible.

Next few days – 31^st January

We certainly had chosen a lovely spot as a base for the next 5 weeks.  Plakias Bay is a magic place about 1/3 of the way from the western point of Crete on the south coast on the Libyan sea.

The first few days the rain just wouldn’t let up and being quite high up in Mirthios we seemed to find ourselves being battered with the rain even coming in under our door!  Meanwhile our van was parked over the road looking quite forlorn having been discarded by us!

After a few days it cleared up enough for us to explore the surrounding area.  Had lots of walks west towards Souda – a little bay with a couple of hotels.  We visited other beaches to the east – not far and easy to get to in the van.  Accompanying the rain was massively high winds which caused massive waves and erosion. 

After a few days we took the van up to the living Previli Monastery – dating from 13^th century.  The monks were instrumental in caring for Brits, Aussies and Kiwis in WW2 hiding them and assisting in their escapes.  They were very much maltreated by the Germans who occupied Crete at that time.  Memorial plaques had been erected with the assistance of  Bruce Edwards from Perth – which is all a big coincidence as we had spent a weekend in Margaret River in Western Australia with family before leaving and the area was  a monument to this part of Crete along with a bay called Prevelly after this Previli here.  Not being particularly religious the monastery was an incredibly peaceful place – so serene and such a great spot high up overlooking the ocean with nothing else around.  The monks themselves were houses in the “older” buildings and signs asked us not to bother them.

We spent a day in Rethymno on the north coast.  Crete, being quite small has 2 “narrow” parts between north and south – ours being about 45 kms.  The route is via the Kourtaliotiko  Gorge which is quite amazing with the road wending its way near the bottom and the mountains rising to each side.  The road is quite good, few cracks and holes here and there but wide enough!

Rethymno is a top holiday spot for northern Europeans but the beach wasn’t the best, guess living in Aus spoils us and what heartens Europeans doesn’t necessarily cut it with us!  However it had an “old” town with a lovely fishing port area surrounded with tavernas, most of which were shut…being winter. 

On the last day of January the weather appeared to be better so we climbed up behind the village of Mirthios past the graveyard and followed the path to the next village.  All the villages are built on the side of the hill, white square houses with crazy paved streets running through.  The people are incredibly friendly, waving from their cars, saying “kalimera” (good morning) and “ya,,ssos.  Stopped for a Greek beer (Mythos) in a taverna overlooking the Plakias Bay beyond and then it rained AGAIN!  We walked in the rain, following the aquaduct path round and round the edges of the hills back to Mirthios.  Rain wasn’t so bad and the walk and views were great!

We’ve found that Cretans don’t eat much meat and its hard to find chicken breasts as guess they all go into yiros (kebabs).  Supermarkets costs are high, they all complain and generally items are 2 to 3 times more than Italy excepting fuel which seems to be slightly cheaper.  Don’t know how they exist as they earn a great deal less. 

This area is COVERED in olive trees, millions of ‘em!  Some citrus and vines.  This time of year they are supposed to harvesting the olives, they lay big black nets under the trees to facilitate this but the weather has been so wet its hard for them.

Our village has a very small shop run by an ancient woman..and we seem to feel drawn to buying stuff there where she has her own wine in plastic bottles and home made “raki” [grappa] which we reckon doubles as paint stripper ,plus home pressed olive oil,and village made fetta cheese-plus the bonus of getting panadol without visiting a pharmacy-note –you simply cannot  buy pills from supermarkets here…like italy.

1^st-6^th February, 2009

Decided we should take our first side trip from Mirthios.  Set off on the Monday and headed firstly north to Spili and then back down towards the south coast as that was the way the road went!  We stopped to have a quick look at the coastal town of Agia Galini on the central south coast and were unimpressed. 

We continued on to the archeological site of Phaistos. Which is the second largest Minoan palace after Knosses and has a majestic location overlooking the Mesara Plain and to the west the imposing Mount Psiloritis. It was an important religious, administrative and economic centre during Minoan times. The first palace, built here around 1900 B.C., was destroyed by an earthquake in 1700 B.C.  Spent a couple of hours there peacefully until half the Greek army arrived (new recruits from Thessaloniki whose only comments were ‘don’t undestand any of this, just a lot of rocks!’.  Guess we knew more than they did!

Went on to Matala – further south west thinking this would be a good overnight stop but along with other spots in the area was and still is kind of  left over “hippy country” seemingly less friendly and quite grubby.

So we drove on towards Agia Deka thru Mesara ‘s lush rural valley  making our way to Gortyn where we parked up for the night as it too late to look around.  Next day we spent about an hour looking at the site, once again all on our own!  Gortyn was first inhabited at the end of the Neolithic period (3000BC) and flourished much later in the Minoan period around 1600-1100BC.  The Gorytn Law Code dated to the  5^th century BC (see picture) attests the prosperity of the city which continued until 3^rd-2^nd century BC.   In AD824 the city was destroyed by the Arabs.

With lovely warm winter weather around we headed north thru the ‘centre’ of Crete, nowhere being very far when you cross south to north or vv!   Headed west along the coast back towards Rethymnon intending to check out a few beaches, which proved quite hard due to the roads leading down to the beaches being too narrow to negotiate.  Eventually found a spot called…wait for it - Bali!  Quite nice, town perched high with lots of new hotels and bays leading down to the final bay – the fishing port.  Imagine that this spot would be pretty crazy in summer.  Went back to the accessible beach area, parked up and nearly got blown away by cyclonic winds that blew down the valley overnight.

It was good to get back to our little pad in Mirthios!

7^th-11^th February

Spent a few days housekeeping and fixing stuff on the van – new end cap for the awning that had somehow got knocked off somewhere in Sicily!  (nb:  Mike managed to knock off part off the other endcap only a couple of hours later, we scrabbled around for a while trying to find it picking up bits of white paper etc that “appeared” to be the missing piece, to no avail!).

Located the little library near the Youth Hostel a few streets back from the beach in Plakios.  Full of 100’s of English books, wish they’d been one in Sicily!  Chatted with a number of expats living here mostly Poms but the odd German, Dutch etc.  99% of them smoked and apparently when asked why they’d chosen Crete the answer was “we’ve come to have a smoke!”.  Borrowed a whole bunch of books before making our way back to Mirthios via the “old mill”.

We’d found a number of walks in the area on a web site called “Peter Thompson walking in Crete” and although some 15 years old, gave us some good ideas for local walks.  This one was, as mentioned via the old mill and followed a path leading into the gorge from Plakias then veering off through olive trees following a stream which we crossed via a pretty little bridge which appeared to be quite old.  The path became steeper into the gorge and hairpinned upwards back towards Mirthios.  Mike followed what appeared to be a goat track whilst I fed up with the hairpin bends decided to be the goat and climb…….easier said than done and had I reminded myself of my age I wouldn’t have ventured forth!

Weather was unreliable at times and unpredictable and although not cold like northern Europe it was hard to be motivated in the driving rain.  However, at the first glimpse of sunshine we set off again on a beautiful walk from the other side of the main gorge where we parked up.  We climbed up and up (joy for my hips, all this climbing!) into the village of Frati.  A quaint little village nestled into the hillside with little churches, tavernas (still closed for the winter). 

On the way back we followed the map wending our way from the other side of the village along the ridge towards Spili for a couple of kms before turning left down thru the olive groves where we lunched adjacent to two tiny white chapels.

Then, horror of horrors following the little internet map we had, the river that we were told to cross was running fiercely.  After trying an alternative route which caused Mike to climb a fence with protruding wires that somehow pierced his male anatomy, we returned to the river, took off shoes and socks and waded across thru the freezing water (see pics).

Another day we walked back to a rocky area between 2 beaches, a favourite spot of ours and managed to catch a couple of hours lazing in the sun.

And yet another walk from Spili which wasn’t planned.  We found ourselves leaving the town climbing yet again!  Veered off on a dirt track through yet more olive groves, some trees still heaving with olives although in the Plakias area they’ve all but been harvested (by means of laying black netting below the trees to catch the falling olives).  The area had a lot of citrus and fig trees and the inevitable bushes of blackberries which, of course, don’t produce anything until the autumn.  The wild flowers were amazing, we found some wild orchids, purple and white, so lovely, considering framing a collage of Cretian wild flowers when we get back to Aus.  Their herbs grow naturally amongst them sage in abundance, thyme, parsely, oregano to name a few.  In the shops you can buy these dried and they package them in combinations for “salads” “chicken” “barbecue” etc etc.  We particularly like the “salad” combination.  They also produce the “famous” Cretan honey with thyme but it is exorbitantly expensive!

Got back to Mirthios before a storm hit.