Wednesday, September 8, 2011 — Sleeping in Graveyards

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

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. 

We began by going west­ward by an inland road, through Spili, turn­ing south at the begin­ning of Not­si­fou Gorge. This we fol­lowed to the sea coast at Plakias. Pro­ceed­ing west­ward along the nar­row coastal plain, we passed by sev­er­al oth­er immense gorges. At Akrotiri Fran­gokastel­lo, there was a Venet­ian fortress, beside which we pic­niced. A lit­tle fur­ther west, we turned inland again, fol­low­ing Imbros Gorge through a gap in the Lef­ka Ori ranges and descend­ing the Kare Gorge to the north­ern main road at Vris­es. From there, it was easy dri­ving to Hania, Crete’s sec­ond city and port.

South­west coast.

Pok­ing around near­by Sou­da, we found the metic­u­lous­ly main­tained Com­mon­wealth War Ceme­tery. Crete played a strate­gic role in the Mediter­ranean the­atre of World War II. Com­mon­wealth forces tried to defend it against a mas­sive Germn assault, but where forced out with heavy casu­al­ties. After the war, bod­ies were care­ful­ly hunt­ed out, and re-buried in this spot, over­look­ing Sou­da Bay. About a third of the graves are uniden­ti­fied. Of the remain­der, the largest num­ber are New Zealan­ders. I found a few Cana­di­ans, all RCAF airmen.

A Turk­ish cas­tle con­trol­ling a pass in the West Crete interior.

Hania pre­serves most of the Venet­ian her­itage of the island. The old har­bour has exten­sive Venet­ian-built for­ti­fi­ca­tions and a lot of Ital­ianate archi­tec­ture. There’s also crum­bling mosque from the Ottoman peri­od, and minaret from a large one no longer extant. The cen­tral mar­ket place pro­vid­ed us with a stock­pile of food. The taste in Crete is for sweet things —- there’s superb ice cream every­where. But bread is anoth­er mat­ter. Some­time in the Neolith­ic, I sur­mise, a boat-load of hard, stale bread must have reached Crete from Lebanon, and ever since then, that’s how Cre­tans have assumed bread should be. There’s a bak­ery in every vil­lage pro­duc­ing a hun­dred vari­eties of hard, crunchy bread, but soft bread is impos­si­ble to find. How­ev­er, the same bak­ers pro­duce won­der­ful flaky spinach, sweet cream, veg­etable, and cheese pies, as well as excel­lent pas­tries. At a remote moun­tain stop, we had a mar­vel­lous orange pie.

Leav­ing Hania, our plan was to dri­ve through the back­roads until sun­set approached, and find some­place to sleep. In this cli­mate, a flat space and a sleep­ing bag is all you need to kip down. But find­ing a flat space is no small achieve­ment. This must be the bump­i­est, gorgi­est, crag­gi­est, most irreg­u­lar place on the plan­et. Anoth­er chal­lenge is find­ing any place that isn’t overun with sheep and goats. But every vil­lage seems to have a lit­tle chapel, neat­ly main­tained, sur­round­ed by graves, and walled off to keep out the live­stock. There are also many such chapels along unin­hab­it­ed roads, on remote crags, and on moun­tain peaks. Each has its icons and votive can­dles. The chapels have no human pres­ence most of the time. We found an unob­trussive out­side the vil­lage of Gre­go­rio, and slept through the night with­in its precinct, sur­rouned by the dead.

The labyrinthine land­scape of West Crete.

But this was only after wind­ing through a land­scape yet more com­plex than all we had seen before. My lit­tle cam­er­a’s bat­tery was exhaust­ed by this point, and there are, at most, two or three more snaps possible.

The moon is full and bright. The dead here are not buried, but encased in above-ground sar­copha­gi, with pho­tos attached. The faces of the elders stare at us as we sleep.

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