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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

We woke after a fair enough sleep at the chapel, and con­tin­ued through the maze of sideroads until we came down of the foothills at Nerochori.

There was one more archae­o­log­i­cal site that I was inter­est­ed in, which we now real­ized we were quite capa­ble of reach­ing: the Idaean Cave, on the north slope of Mount Kous­sanas, above the Nida Plateau, in the cen­tral Psilori­tis Range. This required us to dri­ve east­ward along the north coast, then go inland to Anogia. Past Anogia there were no more vil­lages, only a wilder­ness that, at the high­er ele­va­tions, is a lunar land­scape bare of veg­e­tion which could eas­i­ly be mis­tak­en for the Tibetan plateau.

Along the way, we passed a young cou­ple stolid­ly advanc­ing on foot. But they had no climbers gear or over-large packs, so they did not look like ded­i­cat­ed hik­ers who would dis­dain a ride. We backed up and offered one. Both Fil­ip and I are long time hitch­hik­ers, so we picked them up despite the dif­fi­cul­ty of squeez­ing them into the lit­tle Nis­san. We were reward­ed with pleas­ant com­pa­ny, for they were young Aus­tri­ans of seri­ous mein. She, a pro­fes­sion­al archae­ol­o­gist, he a pro­fes­sor of Aus­tri­an lit­er­a­ture. I’m weak on that last sub­ject, but Fil­ip knows a thing or two. Elis­a­beth Ram­mer is strict­ly a Neolith­ic spe­cial­ist, with lit­tle inter­est in Minoan stuff, but I knew enough about her area to keep up in the conversation.

The Idaean Cave is main­ly of inter­est to Neolith­ic archae­ol­o­gists, though it has yield­ed finds from every era. It’s prob­a­bly the old­est sacred site in Crete. A side cham­ber, eight meters above the floor of the main cham­ber, over­hung with stalegtites, was the sacred precinct. We are among the last to see the cave in rel­a­tive­ly pris­tine con­di­tion, walk­ing up to it on a sheep track, and pay­ing noth­ing to see it. A con­struc­tion crew was there, lay­ing the ground­work for a new, con­trolled access.

The Nida Plain, seen from the Idaean Cave

After leav­ing the cave, we head­ed back along the rim of the Plain of Nida, a bas­ket-like moun­tain plateau. Our guests were head­ed north, so we dropped them off when we turned east­wards, to fol­low a long and rather scary, com­plete­ly unin­hab­it­ed dirt road to the south­ern end of the Psilori­tis Range. The final descent, dozens of hair­pin turns, was the most spec­tac­u­lar of our routes. It defies description.

We returned the car in Aghia Gali­ni, then took a bus to Irak­lion. It was slow and delayed by traf­fic, and we made the fer­ry just as it was about to close its doors. We were the last on board.

This is writ­ten at sea.