Crete, day 5

The next morning I was awake at 5.30, despite my alarm having been set for 6am. I performed my ablutions, got dressed, and headed out to the bus station. Before I even got out of the hostel, a guy stopped me to ask whether I knew how to get to the bus station. I said I was heading there now. Turns out he’d missed the 5.30 tour bus to Samaria, and wanted to do it himself instead. So we tacitly embarked on the adventure together. His name was Joe, and he’s from New York, and works there in films (like Melinda Ziyadat from Sicily).

We bought tickets to Xania/Omalos, and caught that bus with no problems – it was cold – the temperature on the clock display got down to 21 degrees, which felt positively freezing in comparison to the highs of 37 and lows of 29 that we’d been having. At Xania, we had to wait half an hour for an Omalos bus (8.30), but found it OK.

The journey to Xania had been standard, and the city itself large and uninteresting, but the journey to Omalos was slow and very precipitous. I was trying not to fall asleep, but made myself sit upright to avoid getting sick with all the corners. We reached the end of the road eventually, just before 10am. I went to the toilet, and bought some peanuts for the purposes of salt replacement. Joe had coffee, yoghurt/honey and some takeaways for the journey. We eventually set off at about 10.20.

The mountains rising way above us were incredible. The first hour or so of the walk was basically steep steps into the gorge itself, and then it flattened out more as we got to the bottom. Joe and I chatted most of the way, about our respective countries, about photography, about music. There were regular rest points with water, squat toilets, and seats. We used a few of them, and ate a few times. There were some particularly panoramic views that we stopped to photograph. He didn’t have a camera, so he took some with mine, and I took some of him, and we agreed to share them online later.

The path continued alongside the river bed (which was dry) at varying heights. The altitude steadily dropped, though, and I found my left knee starting to give me trouble. Eventually the path followed the river bed itself. We’d been trying to track our progress on the map, and were disappointed that we’d not travelled further. It had seemed like a very long way.

We finally proved that we’d reached the 6km mark (of 12.8km), which was a milestone of sorts. With feet getting more and more sore, we forced ourselves to go on, longing for flat ground instead of constantly moving rocks, and we finally reached the 11km yardstick. There was a rest stop just after this, at which a horse seemed very interested in my grapes.

Not long after starting again, we came to the narrowest point of the gorge, which was 3m wide and 300m high. Quite impressive. By this time, the path was very easy, but quite hot, and I could feel the backs of my lower legs burning. There was some water flowing along the river bed now, and a few hand-made wooden bridges took us over it.

We reached the end of the national park, and surrendered our ticket stubs. It was about 4.15 by then, and we still had 3km to walk to get us to the beach and the boat at Agios Roumeli. We went on for another km or so, through a village with stalls promising fresh orange juice, and lots of goats in pens. [PS: on our bus journey to Omalos, we’d seen herds of mountain goats on the road.] We were then faced with the opportunity for a bus ride for the last 2km for €1.50. We took it, as I was nearly wrecked. It was a little minibus, and probably a profitable little business.

At the beach, we had trouble finding where to buy boat tickets. Upon finding it, we bought €9 tickets for the boat to Hora Skafion, the next of which left at 6pm, giving us an hour to kill. I found a toilet, and joined Joe at the beach, which was black pebble, and absolutely stunning. I took my boots off (bliss) and plunged my hot, aching feet into the coolness of the sea, wading in as far as I could, and splashing my arms. (At this point, of course, I wished I’d brought my swimmers.) I then sat on the edge of the dry pebbles, with my feet buried in the wet ones, enjoying and sound and feel of the jewel-like pebbles. Beautiful.

The 5.30 ferry still hadn’t left by 5.45, so I tore myself away to investigate. There were a lot of people waiting nearby, so I assumed that they were just running late. Joe found me and confirmed this by asking someone. We eventually got on our ferry, which dawdled along the coast, stopping once, before letting us off at Skafia. We found the bus easily, the driver of which insisted I put my dusty boots in the storage underneath. We asked for tickets to Rethymno, and were charged €3.50.

The journey was winding, and the mountains seemed never-ending, and I had no idea where we’d end up. The bus stopped in Vrisses, and the driver said something I couldn’t hear (as we were right up the back). I asked someone nearby (who didn’t know either), so I ran up the front to confirm what he’d said. He said yes, that we’d need to change, as if I was stupid, so I said that I hadn’t heard him. He said something (probably insulting) in Greek, which evoked laughter from the first three rows of the bus. I charged back up to the back of the bus, woke Joe up, and got off, collecting my boots on the way. A new ticket to Rethymno cost €3.70 and the bus would arrive in about 20 minutes. We caught that with no problems, getting back around 9.

We hobbled back to the hostel, and I stopped to get a gyros. Back at the hostel, Joe and I exchanged names and email addresses, and I went to have a shower and go to bed.

Blair was already asleep when I went up. It was stupidly hot and uncomfortable – the pharmacy clock on the way back had said 29 degrees. Yuck! I did get to sleep, though, because I was woken up at midnight. I looked around, and Blair was awake too. We chatted, mainly about Joe and Keira (who’d ended up in our room), and then one of them came in. I’d turned the light off, and we both immediately feigned sleep in a somewhat amusing way. They went out again, and Blair and I finished the conversation, agreeing to go to sleep this time. We said a quick goodbye, though I said I might be awake at 8am to say goodbye properly. We slept, and I don’t remember the others coming back in.