Traveling on Crete

Samarian Gorge

Crete of the ravishing vistas, incessant birdsong, subtly spiced ---that hint of mint and thyme--and the people's enthusiasm. Here are some other things we did there.

St. Nicholas

Crete is filled with gorges, deep folds of the ancient land, but the one most recommended for hiking is the Samaria.

Village of Samaria

Our day began inauspiciously, a raucous bus ride early in the morning with 20-somethings. The trailhead was chaotic and loud, a race was starting and young hormone-pummeled youth were making as much racket as possible. But I skipped forward in my barefoot shoes. 

Ahead were the blue folds of the gorge, sun drenched green and blue shadow, pines and the full furry cypresses of Crete. Rocky paths descended, turning and twisting to the small Byzantine church of St. Nicholas, filled with icons. Nearby, a sacrificial altar to Diana and Apollo had been in use since the 6th c. BC. From clumps of phallic, leathery orchids in the woody shade we emerged into the sun, tortuously along the riverbed, on treacherous stones crossing the crystal stream, while above were travertine caves and rock faces of the narrow gorge. It whistled amidst birdsong and rushing water. Sometimes logs crossed a swinging bridge, sometimes rocks led us back and forth across the river that furled chalkily in pale aqua around white boulders. Above was gravelly, sedimentary rock with fossils 180 million yr old, and always the cypresses filtered the brilliant light.

The village of Samaria was an exquisite ruin, half walls of rocks, a study in light and air. But later as we finished in the present day goat yards of Agia Roumelli we were reminded how oppressive life with its full allotment of burdens can be. Beyond the forgotten village and its own Byzantine church paths playfully arrayed along the stream bed under the cliff faces of the Iron Gate, various bridges, soft high trails, till at the end we came to a spring. We filed out singly, the soft light of the gorge forgotten as we pressed on. Suddenly my every step was painful under the hot sun, through the smelly village of tethered bleating goats. We found a very Greek restaurant where middle aged natives sat in the cold shade of the terrace, whiling away Sunday. We ate all the local dishes till my feet swelled no more. Then we ventured onto the stony beach on the Libyan sea of plunging rocks and deep turquoise water, where Daskalogianni, the ferry, waited.

southern coast

It ploughed along the southern coast, past forbidding scrubby rock face, void of life except for the occasional brilliant white church, tiny and angular, sometimes presiding over a graveyard. Our fellow hikers in various states of somnolence, sunburned and quiet except for children who after 16 k through the Gorge still run like cops and robbers. The inlet at Loutros had a beautifully kept harbor of white Moorish hotels trimmed in blue, and then we reached Sphakia, home of vampires. (The Great Island by Michael Llewelyn Smith recounts the vampire scares of the 60's, when whole villages evacuated in fear.) We climbed into a whale of a bus driven by a young blond man who, once he got going, drove like a maniac at alarming speeds, passing four or five buses, forcing cars to the shoulder, straddling the median, along the travertine rock chiseled highway.

Venetian fortress, Rethymno

The city of Rethymno perches on great bastions over the sea, porous rough gray rocks holding back the foam and bluest turquoise. The sun's rays focus on the barren, Venetian fortress, still shapely with domed guard posts, beautifully arched powder magazines, a graceful mosque, views of the pale umber stone over the turquoise sea. The church has become a museum of Neolithic tools and pots, Minoan clay sarcophagi, beautiful floral designs on late Minoan pots, Roman statuary, and coins from the entire Mediterranean world. The city itself is more youthful than Canea or Heraklion, with beautiful old houses, very much intact, lining the streets. It is light and airy like Minoan paintings.

Daedalus and Icraus

To see the east of Crete we took to the road, well paved, through plateaus and basins, tawny and gold and green down to the sea. We headed south, where we stopped at Agia Galini, where Daedalus and Icarus had flown. Daedalus' statue sits on an overlook of the bay, by his cave, looking so Greek and long-suffering. Looking the part of an artist.

Near the Minoan city of Phaestos we visited Gortyn, a Roman ruin, but the first sight is the 6th c AD Basilica of St. Titus, a gorgeous shell of an enormous Byzantine cathedral. It is a hot, flattening walk to the Odeon where the Law of Gortyn (which has taught us much about 5th c. BC law) is clearly written in boustrophedon Greek. That is an early Greek which reads as the boustrophedon ox ploughs, right to left, then left to right, and so on, even the letters are in mirror images of each other.

Matala

That night we stayed at Matala, an ex-fishing village where hippies lived in cliff caves over the sea in the 60's and 70's. Their reunion was advertised for the beginning of June. Der Zwei Bruder became our abode, a spanking pension run by Austrians for the back packing set. I collapsed to the sound of the violent Mediterranean--waves that smash up the beach. In the dark we walked to the ex-hippy caves, where Roman burial grounds were later discovered. By the parking lot (a grassy stretch under cliffs, under vine covered trellises) were ruins of Roman settlements, that were being completely ignored except perhaps by some vagrants living in a cave there. The night brought cats to the restaurants to beg from hearty Swedes and drunk Greeks. In the morning I jogged up to and climbed rocks where caves waited for hippies and a goat bleated. Below was a beach, probably nudist.

from the trail at Matala

We stopped (to pee) where enormous pink oleanders hid huge vacant lots of wheat colored grasses and miscellaneous garbage dumped and a few munching goats. The glory of the colors, red tawny rock and earth against the piercing blue sky, laced with rose blossoms that lent a visual fragrance to the hillsides. Shrines everywhere, and goats scampering, long silky fringe and bulging eyes. Two rams with horns swirled backwards in many spirals, two grand veterans face to face.

View near Agia Nikolaus

Near Agia Nikolaus we stayed at a huge budget hotel filled with hard drinking young Russians. In the morning we jogged down to the sea, the fresh searing sun in olive groves descending the small rocky peninsula to turquoise waters.

Lato

Nearby is the most beautiful Byzantine church, Panagia Kera. Complete Biblical stories from the Apocryphal scriptures are told in Cretan icon painting, covering the walls and pillars. The large dark Greek eyes, sad and wise. The massacre of the innocents, John the Baptist's head on a platter, gorgeous undulatating landscapes and wide-eyed saints, staring and vulnerable.

Also nearby the large ruin of the Dorian center of Lato reigns over summits flanking a gorge. In the rough gray stone of Dorian times, the prytanée and ruler's home are now tumbling boulders. The facing hill had an undistinguishable stone theatre, but very distinguishable were the workshops, shops and homes ranging the hillsides.

Lunch in a Greek village

We drove out a narrow precipitous winding road above the sea and fields of olives to a tiny village where the men had been skin diving and ate their seafood and tzatziki with raki they tried to share with us, and laughed in that hearty inclusive Cretan exuberance.

We spent our last night on the road at Sitie, and had wonderful swordfish steak, which we fed to a beautiful white and black cat with a mangled ear. Across the purple port, rock mountains rose pink from the sea, while in front of us children played on the plaza. SItie is not yet a tourist destination--there we were simply visitors. It has some elegant house of newly restored Venetian stone carvings or iron balconies. At the harbor were a few thoroughly rusted hulls of ships. Sitie has a simple air of sweetness, with a horizon of blue mounds sleeping in the sea.

Icon of the Cretan Renaissance

Our last visit was to the museum of the History of Crete in Heraklion. It told many long-winded stories, of the long siege of Candia (21 years) against the Turks, of the fierce Cretan rebels under years of domination, of the exquisite Byzantine art, solemn, austere, restless faces that chafe under life's sorrows, like the Greek men themselves who seem more fraught, more divided and complex and sensitive than other Mediterraeanean men. The museum also told of the multiple heroisms of the Cretan people. The Nazis encountered fierce civilian resistance for the first time in World War II when they invaded Crete--civilians, monks, guerillas and the British held them off. After the Germans recovered from the surprise, they mercilessly decimated the civilian population throughout the occupation.

Poseidon, 6th c. BC

The Museum was run by women, a different face of Crete: women taking matters into their hands, taking stock of your needs, making things work, responding verbally to everything, handling the situation. The museum is something to be proud of, its sophisticated way of discussing the highly visual icons, its thorough history, its crisp and tart feta pastries in thick crusts of sesame seeds.

How difficult it was to leave this sublime climate! And those distant and mysterious ancestors of Minos, airy devotees of motion and the spiral, animists and pagans who worshiped on mountaintops, who saw the god in fleeting moments. They were great exorcists, so said the Egyptians, and renowned artisans of the day. Egypt, dominated by the flux of the Nile, created massive stability, while Crete with her powerful and static sun, created flow in the wind and sublime waves of blue.

On parting we couldn't find the airport for the endless dilapidated signs in Greek, and so, wandering through an industrial area, we stopped next to a sturdy woman on a motorbike, chin like a promontory, helmetless, kinky Minoan hair flying, blue flowered sleeveless blouse, talking on her cell phone. Follow me, she said and when Jacques would begin to drive alongside her she waved him, patted him back behind, we the foreign descendants of old Minos, and got us there. Our goddess of the voyage.

Canea, Crete

Canea's Venetian Port

The Bay of Skouda

We drove along the indigo and turquoise sea under a sun that would be devastating were it not for the stiff, relentless wind, along the irrepressible rose blossoms of laurel and heaping mounds of bouainvilleas. Russet and chalky soil supports pines and tall full umbrellas of eucalyptus, blossoming cacti, and full palms, carved into order by the rocks and the sea. We stopped at Kalami overlooking the Skouda Bay where Byzantine and medieval fortresses still more or less guard the entrance to the gleaming waters, where purest white hovering gulls seem to reflect the flecks of white in the violent blue waters, where a hawk hovered just beneath us, a perfectly still crown of feathers over the rust-colored land. I ate cooked greens and stuffed vine leaves that we fed to a black and white cat, a dead ringer for my dear recently deceased Shiva, but lean and muscled with a full set of testicles. He had Shiva's thumb, and was careful not to scratch us but pawed the ground. Signs warned us not to take pictures--the military are still there. We drove on to Canea on an unpromising road of car dealers which led to a gorgeous sight: the ruined bastions of the Venetians overlooking the pristine sea, the russet stone againt deep indigo. We walked into the old town's winding streets--and were shocked, for a moment or two, by a sudden rush of tourists--and then calmed by the leisurely cafes that perfeclty cradle the harbor where Venice once built her redoubtable ships.

View from the terrace

Canea

Canea had been the site of a Neolithic settlement, and later the wealthy Minoan city of Kydonia, which has revealed Minoan graves (1700-1500 BC), frescoes and pottery. Mosaics have been discovered from Hellenistic times. Canea took her present form in the 14th c. when the Venetians built the harbor and the medieval city where we walked. Then Byzantine churches became mosques under the Turks in the 17th c. We were on a home exchange, in an old house in the former Jewish quarter. Our terrace overlooked Canea's rooftops of rich tile and crumbling concrete, water tanks and solar panels, hillocks of flax and green rumpling in the wind, before the snowy mountains of the west. Up there the wind whistles, birds chirp incessantly, and swallows swipe by your heads at dusk.

Our home

Around the block was the recently restored Synagogue Etz Hayym. In 1944, once the Nazis had arrested and murdered the Jewish Community, the Synagogue was stripped of its religious artifacts and squatters moved in. Tombs of rabbis were desecrated and buried under rubble. After 1956 it was used as a kennel for stray dogs and the front courtyard became a chicken run. But later in the century Etz Haayyim came to be listed by the World Monuments Fund as an Endanered Monument of Greece, and was restored with international funding, although in 1996 an earthquake brought down the roof. On 10 October 1999 400 persons assembled to witness the installment of the Torah. Unfortunately, its history was not finished. Twice the Synagogue was restored, and twice set fire by vandals. Today it is beautiful, and guarded with cameras and fences.

Canea's immense 19th c orthodox Cathedral is decorated with outsized Greek saints and a chubby long-haired Christ with the slightly helpless look of many of these Greek men. Across the square is a tiny elegant Venetian church, all simplicity. We wandered through the old aristocratic quarter, where flowers cannot be prevented from blossoming under so much sun, now converted to hotels and rooms for let, up to a summit where a jumble of squash blossoms and olive trees and irrepressible flowers ensconce a neat farm house, and then down to the harbor's majestic stone walls cradling a small church which has become a Byzantine museum of Cretan art. It is an utterly spare and elegant late gothic church that contains frescoes from the middle (11th c) and late Byzantine. The Cretan Renaissance brought a more expressive Byzantine style, a blend of icons and a more natural plasticity.

Excavation of Minoan city Kydonia at Canea

The golden walls of the Byzantine Kastelli enclose the remains of Kydonia, the Minoan center. Along narrow streets utterly decayed houses of exotic Venetian architecture border restored houses that have become hotels, "antique shops" charging outrageous prices for cast off tourist items, and goats' bells made in India. And of course the endless restaurants solicit your business mercilessly. 

Along the russet Venetian wall at the water's edge--and along the periphery of Crete--several shacks were surrounded by chicken wire and voluptuous blossoms. We followed the Venetian wall back to the harbor where large, dusty dogs at the feet of old men narrowed their eyes in greeting, and sun weathered waiters waved at us in the stiff wind.

At Canea's Anthropological Museum, filled mostly with finds from the Minoan era, a woman in the rose ruin of a cloister was holding a bright chat with her own reflection in the glass. Finally budged by my presence, she continued speaking to herself, her refined face drawn back tight in a beautiful smile. Back inside the museum she held up a hand to the stone statue of a Roman philosopher, approaching him with her salute. Then she moved among us, her voice melodic as a lyre. I wondered, is Crete--home of Europe's first great civilization--like Jerusalem? Do the ancient stones upset one's sanity?