On Saturday, June 2nd, we were up early and walked around the Venetian Harbor to the Hotel Porto Veneziano, where at 6:05 we were to be picked up. A van took us to a bus, where we joined 51 other hikers for the trip south to the Samaria Gorge, the longest gorge in Europe. Inland Crete, as we would later discover about mainland Greece, has nowhere to put any flat or straight roads. The guide for Elafonissos Travel, a blond, long-haired Austrian named Thomas, said that people with motion sickness could go to the front of the bus and get a plastic bag, but they should do so at least a minute before needing them! He also said that people with knee problems or heart problems shouldn't do the hike. The first few kilometers would be very steep, and the use of hiking poles would be recommended. The latter part of the hike in the national park (the last three kilometers, to the Libyan Sea at the village of Agia Roumeli, would be outside the park) would be on very rough ground--a dry riverbed full of pebbles. If, during the first four kilometers, you decided not to finish, you should slowly work your way back up to the beginning. Otherwise, you were committed to finish the total sixteen kilometers (ten miles), though you could take a shuttle bus for the last two kilometers. For real emergencies, there are mules to carry people out.
This was a little intimidating, but the hike is very popular: hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people do it every day. All the travel agencies and tour companies run busloads to the trailhed. The price was twenty euros, plus five for national park admission and ten for the ferry from Agia Roumeli.
We arrived around 8:00 at Omalos, where we had a breakfast and toilet stop for fifteen minutes (abbreviated because we were running late). Then we got back on the bus and rode to Xyloskalo ("Wooden Stairs"), 1230 meters (over 4000 feet) above sea level. Our goal, Agia Roumeli, is on the coast. We rented hiking poles from Thomas (two each for three euros apiece), got our park admission ticket from him and started down. There are many water stops in the gorge, and three toilet stops, but no food and no permanent residents until you exit the park. Thomas would follow half-an-hour later, to keep track of stragglers. He said that we should leave Agios Nikalaos rest area by 9:30, Samaria village rest area by 11:30 and the Christos rest area by 1:30. At 4:45 he would hand out ferry tickets at the Kri-Kri Restaurant in Agia Roumeli and at 5:30 we would take the ferry to Sougia, where our bus would be waiting.
It was grueling. While most of the hikers went blithely along at normal walking speed, we were picking our way carefully with the hiking poles. Our aging knees would not have gotten through it without them. We had a little to eat (brought along with us) at the abandoned village of Samaria. Mary Joy offered part of a banana there to a kri-kri (the endangered Cretan wild goat that was the reason for creating the national park in the first place, in 1962), but it preferred the tree leaves that other hikers were giving it. Between Samaria and Christos I became seriously worried that Mary Joy wasn't going to to be able to finish, but Thomas came along and encouraged her, and after a rest at Christos, there was only a short walk to the narrowest part of the gorge, the Iron Gates, then not far to the park entrance, just outside of which were some food and drink stands, where we each had a glass of fresh orange juice. We decided that since we had come all this way on our own, it would be wimping out to take the bus into town. So we walked the final three kilometers to Agia Roumeli, arriving sometime after 3:00, after walking for about seven hours. It is theoretically possible to do it in four, but we felt proud of what we had accomplished. The scenery along the way was spectacular. We were greeted at the Kri-Kri Restaurant with the offer of a cold Amstel beer (I ended up drinking two half-liter mugs) and lunch. We had a whole fish. We were joined by one of Greece's omnipresent cats, but we didn't give it anything.
Afterwards, we went down to the shore, and waded in the Libyan Sea. We could have gone swimming at the beach (we'd brought our suits), but decided not to. At 4:45, we got our ferry tickets. There are two 5:30 ferries: one east to Chora Sfakion, one west to Sougia. There are no roads in or out of Agia Roumeli. The south coast of Crete is very rugged.
In the end, we caught our ferry and our bus. On the bus, Thomas said that there had been 790 hikers in the park that day, and that the temperature at Agia Roumeli (the hottest point) was 28 degrees Celsius (83 degrees Fahrenheit)--a pleasant temperature--it could have been much hotter.
We were dropped off near the Porto Veneziano and, after looking for a particular restaurant that turned out to be defunct, had dinner again at To Maridaki: Greek salad and octopus--very nice.
