Crete "the end"

2^nd – 17^th March

Must we farewell Crete?

After over 5 weeks based in the Plakias area in the village of Mirthios, we bade our farewells to Anna and her family and sadly drove off, thru the lovely gorge for the last time bearing right at Spili and driving on a familiar road south and heading east.  After a few hours we started a long long climb to skirt the Lassithas plateau giving us magnificent views out to the ocean and beyond.  Came across another evocative memoire of  WW11 – near Anno Viannos.   Modern figures were aligned to the right side whilst the central statue was a bent over darkened figure, rather foreboding but in a wonderful spot!

We then began our long slow climb down towards Ierapetra.  On Google earth we had noticed the large amount of tomato sheds in the area but nothing had prepared us for the sea of them!  Guess they have to make a living but it sure spoils it for the tourist!  They produce so many tomatoes that Albanians, Slovenians and Bulgarians are amongst the pickers.  Along with the very arid rocky surroundings of the area and main roads in poor condition, we needed to be convinced about this area!

Found a good “free camping” spot for the night and next day returned back 7 kms to Ierapetra to look around.  Pleasantly surprised – a not so big town fringing a curved bay with the old town in one corner the port and fortress  adjacent.   Restaurants and tavernas adorn the seafront “promenade” and the new part of town sits behind it all.  Not so bad after all!  Found what they call “Napoleon’s House” in a street close to the fort, cute little stone house…..when he was en route to Egypt for his campaign against the Mamelukes, he stopped off in Ierapetra.  Also visited the small but very good Archeological Museum…..wonderful examples of pottery from Neolithic, Minoan and Roman times. 

Free camped again,  this time at a wonderful spot down a steep slope (poor van!) and next to the ocean with closed tavernas to each side of us – best nights’ sleep in ages!

A few kms west of Ierapetra was a little village in a small cove with rows of old white houses up the incline from the ocean – kind of an ancient “hippy feel” to it, called Mirtos.    We parked up at the edge of the village and wandered along the seafront rows of shut Tavernas  (does Crete EVER start its tourist season?)….an elderly bent over black clad lady tried to sell us a room in her small hostelry….a cute spot.  Met a Welsh guy who’d lost his wife recently and gave us the “low down” on the area. 

Whilst in Mirthios, we had come across a web site called “Walking with Donkeys”.  A Scots and English couple had set up in Anatolia a few years back (village 16 kms in the hills behind Ierapetra) and with their love of animals, care for 7 donkeys who had lived out their “useful” life carrying large loads for farmers in the area.  The Anatolia area is quite lovely, very rocky, usual forests of olives and little villages with stone houses.  We’d arranged that we’d love to visit the donkeys and so that’s what we did!  It was a long long slow climb for the poor van and some of the road was, once again, a bit scary for Mike! Fortunately a massive band of low cloud obscured the view!  We had a wonderful few hours with the donkeys, the dogs, the puppies and the chicken not forgetting Alistair and Susie!  It costs a lot to feed the donkeys about 12 Euros a bag so if anyone reads this blog and wants to either donate or visit them mail to: info@walkwithdonkeys.com 

We drove back a different way thru the village of Kalamafka with a more leisurely drive than the way up……

It was now 6^th March so we decided to make a “side trip” to the north east of the island driving up the shortest route from south to north – only 14kms and the flattest (flat land in Crete???)  Reaching the coast we turned east towards Sitia,  a large town by Cretian standards maybe 8000 – 9000 inhabitants.   Sitia was newer than other cities, a seafront arranged around the seafront, venetian port and castle this time high up above the bay.  The day was hampered visually by the massive amount of sand in the atmosphere having blown in, once again, from the coast of Africa. This time it was almost acrid and we thought it might abate slightly on the north coast, but if anything, it was worse! Had a look around Sitia then made out way further east but the crumbling yellow rock, the dusty landscape, dry rock formations and visually uninspiring coastline made us just stop and hole up for the night parked at the entrance of a “tourist town” called Dionysos  WHICH WAS AWFUL!!!!  A deserted labyrinth of tiny apartments, some unfinished, empty swimming pools,  badly tended gardens – yet another complex started and not completed?

Next day we decided to chance it and turn inland following signs to yet another lot of Minoan ruins called Paisos taking a circuitous route and we were surprised how lovely it was.  Gave up getting near this Paisos place so parked in a village and walked and walked……and found the site atop a high hill, few rocks lying around, think we’re getting a bit Minoaned out!!  But the walk was lovely, usual miriads of olive trees and the best almond blossom we’d seen in Crete!  We were very high up – about 800m – so if the atmospheric sand hadn’t been so thick it would’ve been a great view!

Returned to the Ierapetra area and returned to the camp site we were at before to recharge the “batteries”.  Technically you ‘could’ say the site was closed but they were happy to have us stay and every time we see Maria and her husband we get either given either fresh eggs, capsicums, tomatoes, egg plant etc., the Cretans always like  to “give” that little extra thing.

After a day of washing, walking on the beach, checking the internet, shopping etc and generally lazing around,  with the sandy atmosphere having cleared after some rain, we headed off once again leaving the Ierapetra area for good.

It was now 10^th March and with our departure from Crete sadly drawing nearer we headed directly north towards Agios Nikolaos detouring to take a look at Ha Canyon, a small “crack” going deep into a thin gorge.  Drove along the coast heading west found a magic spot above the ocean near Istro, one of the many bays in this area – the ocean in this area being from light to deep turquoise.  Looked SO good we donned our bathers but was TOOOOOO cold for me, however Mike made it in after – around 5 attempts! Cold but invigorating! 

Next day had a good look around Agios Nikolaos and Elounda and we have to say that we thought we wouldn’t find an area we liked as much as Plakias in the west but this area was so so beautiful.  The sea was crystal clear and although the towns were a bit touristy, they were clean and picturesque.  The backdrop of the fairly high mountain range added to the beauty of the place.

We ended up in Plaka which is a tiny ocean village right opposite the island of Spinalonga and we parked up in the big car park there right next to the ocean and fell asleep with the distant sound of the ghosts of the lepers from the colony that were on Spinalonga for 50 years!

Next day we set off in direction Heraklion where we will, at long last, view the famous site of Knossos.  However, we headed inland from Agios to Kritsa which, according to the tourist literature said it was a “typical Cretan village” etc etc., trouble was we had stayed at one for 5 weeks in the west!  The back streets were cute and if the shops had been open displaying all the lace cloths and ceramics guess it would have been a bit more interesting.  We then headed further inland to view the archeological site of Lato.  To our amazement it was pretty impressive, a Greek city from 700BC with a fair amount of well preserved buildings set high in the hills with a picture postcard view down to the Mirabellou Bay.  What a great place to have lived!

Kind of deliberately took the wrong road to wind up through the hillside villages on our way back down to the coast, guess we were subconsciously thinking that this would be our last chance!  We shall truly miss our favourite parts of Crete.  Arrived a camp site east of Heraklion to spend our last 4 days driving thru Benidorm like resorts hardly a word of Greek to be seen – all in English, how sad!  Yuck!

Ended up staying 5 nights at the camp site,  as usual we were the only people there!  Great hot showers though.  Teresa developed a bad case of vertigo and having seen a doctor in Agios Nikolaus with no improvement spent first day in Heraklion seeking out an ENT specialist.  He turned out to be a miracle worker tossing her head side to side for half an hour in order to get the misplaced liquid from one area of the inner ear to another!  He then insisted on 2 days rest – so we obliged.

So finally we got to see Knossos on our last day – we had delayed our sailing to Piraeus by a day.  It was very interesting and we spent a good 2 hours there, however, having seen other Minoan Palaces around Crete we were not majorly impressed.  The work that the Brit guy called Arthur Evans did between 1900 & 1931, in our view, ruined parts of the palace with his concrete “renovations”….its hard to find a happy medium when they need to “entice” people to visit by giving them a taste of what it “may” have looked like.  But for us, it really spoilt it and his interpretations of what rooms was used for what had us kind of puzzled.  So, are we now experts?  I think not!

Knossos was inhabited for thousands of years beginning with a Neolithic settlement around 7000 BC!  However the first palace was built around 1900 BC – that’s nearly 4,000 yrs ago!   It was, at the time, the main centre of power in Crete.  Walking around the remains of the complex multi-stored buildings one can understand how the place was associated with the mythological labyrinth The complexity of the structure grew to around 20,000 sq metres with the original design by a guy called Dedalos, who with his son tried to fly off with self made wings  (weren’t we all taught that story in school?) as King Minos held him prisoner not wanting the design revealed to anyone. 

Another disappointing aspect is that many artifacts, figurines etc had been removed to the Herakleon Museum and we felt it would have been more appropriate to have had a separate museum on site so that visitors could view all the discoveries made at the same time as viewing the site itself.  However, the Palace is a monumental symbol of Minoan civilisation due to its construction, use of luxury materials and massive size. 

So, on the 17^th March we sailed on Anek Lines ship “Ariadne” (apt?) bound for Piraeus, this time spoiling ourselves by getting a cabin!  Goodbye lovely Crete – we shall miss you!