Samaria Gorge

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.

Rural Crete

On Friday, June 1st, we picked up something to eat at Phyllo, just as it was opening, then, at 9:00, met Chania Adventures owner-guide (and former fighter pilot) Nasos and his four-wheel-drive minivan at the Starbucks a few blocks from our hotel.  Originally, from home, I had tried to arrange taking his "Milia Mountain Retreat" tour scheduled for Sunday, but he had e-mailed back that that wasn't available, but we could combine that with the olive oil and wine tasting tour on Friday, at no extra cost.  That worked perfectly well for us.

Nasos drove us to pick up a young pair of newlyweds from Chicago, then we went to Ano Vouves, where we saw a 3000-year-old olive tree and visited a museum relating to olives and olive oil.  Then we went to the Anoskeli olive mill and winery, where we toured the facility then sat down for a tasting of olive oil and five of their wines, with terrific snacks.

Next, Nasos dropped us off at one end of the Mesavlia gorge, and picked us up at the other end after we walked through it.  This was a short (less than an hour?), easy walk, through pleasant, but not spectacular scenery.  It in no way compared to what we would do the following day.

Then, we went up into the hills, to Milia Mountain Retreat, an old village restored and turned into an eco-resort.  The son of one of the founders had gone of to become a gourmet chef, and had come back to create perfection from traditional Cretan dishes, using local products.  We had lunch there.  I have never in my life had such wonderful moussaka, and the zucchini and potato dish was also very good.

Afterwards, we were able to visit one of the little houses used by visitors to the resort: a combination of rusticity and stylish comfort.

The last stop on our tour was at the cave of St. John the Hermit, a pilgrimage site with great views over Chania and the coast to the west.

Nasos is a very interesting person, a good guide and a great driver.  We enjoyed the day very much.

For dinner, we went to Tamam, recommended, near our hotel and very good.

Chania, Crete

On Tuesday, May 29, 2018, at 4:54 p.m., we flew out of MSP on Delta, on our way to Amsterdam.  Delta has compromised the quality of its flight experience, cramming more seats, closer together, into the plane.  If I were taller than I am (five foot ten) I would have been very uncomfortable.  As it is, my knees were jammed in against the seat in front of me.  It was even worse than the EasyJet flight we had later in the trip.  The aisles were barely wide enough for one person to get through, and the flight attendants, when moving carts, had to call out to people to pull their arms in out of the aisles. For the first time on an overseas flight, Mary Joy couldn't sleep, leading to a continuing sleep deficit once we got where we were going.

Which was Chania (pronounced something like "hahn YAH"), on the Greek island of Crete.  We were supposed to have about a four-hour layover in Amsterdam, and then I had taken the gamble of scheduling only a forty-five-minute layover in Athens, since there would be a (much) later flight on the same airline in case we were delayed.  Unfortunately, due to a major day-long strike of civil servants to protest Greek austerity measures required by the nation's creditors, the air traffic controllers were out, so the Amsterdam-Athens flight on Aegean Airlines was delayed by forty-five minutes.  Our flight to Chania on Olympic (owned by Aegean) had just left when we arrived.  So we waited four hours for the next flight (for a while, it was iffy whether we could even get seats on that flight), and eventually got to our hotel (Porto Antico) in the old town after 11 p.m., Wednesday.  But our room was very nice, with a view over the old Venetian Harbor.  There was also a flask of honey-flavored raki (a firewater made from grape skins, like the Italian grappa--though we later learned that "raki" was actually the Turkish name for it--locally, it was officially known as "tsigoudia."  There was yet another name for it on the Greek mainland), along with two shot glasses.

On Thursday, May 31st, we had a very nice breakfast on the waterfront, at the restaurant Pallas, which exclusively uses stylized Greek lettering on its signs--not "PALLAS," and not even "ΠΑΛΛΑΣ," but an artsy version of the latter that has the lambdas ("Λ") rounded at the top.  Clearly, they are refusing to descend to pandering to tourists.  Then we spent the day orienting ourselves to Chania, which has the reputaion of being the prettiest city in Crete.  We visited the Orthodox cathedral, the Catholic cathedral (unobtrusive in a courtyard behind a door across the square from the not-at-all-unobtrusive Orthodox cathedral), the tourist information office and the central market.  In the market we visited a cheese shop, and when Mary Joy asked the owner if a certain cheese was made from cow's milk, he indignantly replied "Cow's milk is water!"

We had a late lunch at To Maridaki--very good.  That evening, we took a tour of the old town with Natour Lab's Tatiana, an archeologist.  It was interesting and informative, and included some local food specialties at Phyllo, a bakery-cafe.