The Idaean Cave on Mt. Koussanas

… the Gods have placed sweat.
Long is the road there­to and steep and rough at first.
But when the height is won, then is there ease, 
Though griev­ous­ly hard in the winning.

- Hes­iod

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Pho­tos tak­en in south­ern Cen­tral Crete:

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A love­ly Argiope Loba­ta we came across. It’s ven­omous, but not dan­ger­ous. Fil­ip’s fin­gers (I think) show the scale.

We left Aghia Pav­los with only a vague plan to explore West Crete. We set­tled on using a mix­ture of main and back roads. The Cre­tan land­scape is extra­or­di­nar­i­ly com­plex and var­ied. With­in min­utes you can switch from some­thing that looks like Afghanistan to some­thing that looks like Bohemi­an or South­ern Ontario wood­land. Noth­ing can be reached in a straight line. A road between two vil­lages, marked as a few kilo­me­ters long, will be pre­cip­i­tous climb by mul­ti­ple switch­baks, or descend into a maze-like com­plex of canyons, and yet appear on the map in the “plains” region. His­to­ri­ans won­der if the com­plex­i­ty of Knos­sos’ floor plan inspired the myth of The­seus and the Labyrinth. Well, any­thing Cre­tan might have inspired it, because the whole land is a nat­ur­al labyrinth, and any giv­en patch of it is a labyrinth with­in a labyrinth, and every vil­lage is a labyrinth with­in a labyrinth with­in a labyrinth.  Read more »

Pho­tos tak­en at Aghia Triada:

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Pho­tos tak­en at Phaestos:

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The only dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting the rent­ed car was hav­ing to hitch­hike to the near­est town (22 km) to make the arrange­ments, with­out yet being cer­tain that we would get it. But we made the trip in two rides. There was no has­sle. We got a lit­tle Nis­san man­u­al shift.

So we made for the remain­ing planned sites: Aghia Tri­a­da and Phaestos.

View from Phaestos. The val­ley would have been just as pro­duc­tive in Minoan times.

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The Phaestos Disk

We relaxed for a day, catch­ing up on sleep, then engag­ing in noth­ing more stren­u­ous than writ­ing, sip­ping kafe hel­lenikos, and enjoy­ing the beach­es. Aghios Pav­los can only be reached by a wind­ing moun­tain road, and the coast here is rough, with only an occa­sion­al cove. There is per­pet­u­al wind, a bless­ing in the Cre­tan heat, but the hotel must keep bas­kets of rocks even in the office, to hold down papers, and table­cloths are clamped to tables. The beach­es are civ­i­lized (i.e., cloth­ing option­al) and have only a few bathers at a time. Coves are sep­a­rat­ed by geo­log­i­cal­ly inter­est­ing and visu­al­ly pleas­ing rock for­ma­tions. Read more »

pho­tos tak­en in East Crete:

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The peb­bles and thorns made “sleep” into a con­stant cycle of drift­ing off, then wak­ing to remove a sharp rock pok­ing into my ribs, or to remove a thorn that had worked its way through my sleep­ing bag and into my flesh. I got my revenge on Fil­ip by snor­ing loud­ly when I did man­age to sleep, ruin­ing his sleep.

It was a tough but scenic climb up to Thryp­ti. Once above the cliffs, which were resplen­dent with great cav­erns, crags, and even a spec­tac­u­lar stone arch over emp­ty air, were came into pine for­est, and a long snaking moun­tain road that could have been in the Cana­di­an Rock­ies. This took the bet­ter part of the morn­ing. Read more »

The north shore of Crete, espe­cial­ly around Mallia, is the most depress­ing part. While the land and seascapes are beau­ti­ful, the coast is stuffed with beach resorts over­flow­ing with tacky tourist busi­ness, and seems to have been tak­en over by the Russ­ian Mafia to sell furs. The signs of the immense fur empo­ria are always in Russ­ian, occa­sion­al­ly in Eng­lish, nev­er in Greek. Why any­one would come to Crete to buy a fur coat baf­fles me. Wear­ing fur in this cli­mate would kill you. Thank­ful­ly, the bus took us well past this vul­gar­i­ty and we turned inland into the broad val­ley that forms the “neck” sep­a­rat­ing East Crete from the rest of the island. Read more »