A Season of Wonderlust: Crete in full-er, Part II

When I arrived by bus in Siteia from Irakleio, it was mid-afternoon. The day was Sunday, the heat daunting. I hoisted my main bag onto my back, grabbed the day pack in one hand and in the other, a weighty bag of dry foods I’d bought in the last town. My hopes that being closer to the sea would mitigate the heat evaporated as I trudged a half-mile from the bus station down a broad, shadeless sidewalk (past the closed grocery store - no fresh produce today!) and then turned to follow a highway along the coast for another 1.5 miles.

The walk offered beauty and a grueling test of my endurance at the same time. On one side, and about ten feet below the sea wall: brilliant, blue sea, lazy bathers, and waves foaming and receding from the bright, rocky toes of a beach. On the other side: a two-lane highway, oppressive heat, fast Greek traffic (about which I had perpetual, very low-level nervousness) and armies of cicadas forever reminding me, “it is hooooooooootttttttt.”

This 30 minute walk dilated to about 8 hours, measured in physical labor. My bottled water quickly dwindled, my body ached from about 40 extra pounds of freight and beneath my pushed-up shirt sleeves and pants I swam in sweat. I started to get a headache and feared heat exhaustion. I cursed myself for not getting a hotel in the city center. What was another 50 or so Euros a night compared against dying out on the road from heat stroke? What if I turned around now, went back and got that expensive hotel room even though I was also still paying for the first hotel? It would be worth it, wouldn’t it?

I kept moving forward, stared into the hypnotic heat shimmer that hovered over the pavement and thought, this is the sort of irrational, shoulder-shrug decision to ignore the risks of the moment that my family will later grieve over after my body is identified and returned to the States.

When I came upon a fork in the road (to the left, straight ahead and level, to the right, up a steep hill), I checked the map on my phone and obeyed the instruction to climb the hill. Partway up the hill I found an unmarked, narrow staircase that seemed to bisect the hillside. Thinking that for the cost of a briefly elevated heart rate I could avoid a much longer journey along the road’s tedious switchback, I chose the stairs, and arrived on the back patio of an apartment complex. Thankfully no one emerged, and I sheepishly made my way to the driveway, which trailed almost all the way back along the roadway I had attempted to circumvent, before I had to clamber up a tall retaining wall and edge around a locked gate across the drive. So much for conserving energy! Thereafter I stuck to the road.

Up and up this winding, and had I not been so tired and thirsty beautiful, peaceful road, I climbed. Buildings were replaced by orchards and empty fields. I referred to the phone more frequently and seemed despite the scarcity of dwellings to be getting nearer to my destination. I finally angled left onto a broken dirt trail, at which point my exhaustion and instinctive paranoia knit together in my mind a conspiracy of a fraudulent hotel, meant to lure ignorant, Western travelers into the middle of nowhere on this hilltop. I passed a (probably) abandoned building a bit down the hill, and the X on my treasure map was nothing more than a dirt clearing. I started to listen for revving engines. Where was the ambush going to come from?

Then I swallowed my irrational anxiety and (finally - finally!) called the number of the hotel. I think I am lost, I explained. Where are you? He asked. I came down the road and went up the hill I thought I was supposed to go up, I explained. I think you went up a hill too early - there is a big sign naming our hotel at the foot of the hill. Just across the street is a huge rock sticking out of the sea. It will be very hard to miss, he assured me. Ok, thank you, I said. See you soon!

Did I say earlier I walked for about 1.5 miles along the sea? Let us make that closer to 2 miles, for a total of 2.5 since the bus station, in 90 + degrees Fahrenheit (upwards of 30 Celsius). Everything the fellow described was true. The highway wound through a small corn field, and on the other side, sure enough, there was a giant rock sticking like a broken ship out of the sea, and a large sign for the hotel/apartment building I was to stay in. I hiked up this hill - which, mercifully, was only about a ten minute ascent - and staggered to the porch of the main building.

What a sight I must have been. I must have been beet red, sweating enough to look like I had just emerged from the water, and looking like an abused pack mule with all my baggage. The man I spoke with was not actually present, but two women - an elderly one who seemed to simply live there and one whom I assume was her daughter, who managed the place - greeted me, brought me in, sat me down, and gave me a cold glass of juice. Oh, thank you people of Greece, for your hospitality, which brought me back from the brink of catastrophe on that day!

They allowed me to rest for about ten minutes, then we briefly discussed my booking. As opposed to the man I spoke with on the phone - who I believe was another family member - the two women only spoke about five words of English, so we had to get him on the phone to clarify my reservation and so I could ask a few simple questions about the town. My normal traveler’s curiosity was severely curtailed at this moment, however, by my desire to shed all this junk, get in a shower, and drink about a gallon of water.

The younger woman made up a plate of fresh cherries, and maybe apricots, if I recall correctly, which I eyed hungrily as she escorted me up several flights of stairs to my room. This complex was the closest I came to a lodging that matched my stereotypical vision of Greek dwellings. The building was modular, multilevel, and painted all in whites and blues. My room was magnificent: it was two levels, with cool tile floors, big windows with shutters and screens on almost every wall for maximum cross breezes, and two balconies (one opening out of the living room on the main floor, and a second emerging from the bedroom on the second floor). The kitchen was fully equipped with a refrigerator, stove, table, couch, and even a TV (which I wasn’t interested in and didn’t use).

I thanked the lady profusely (thank you was one of the only phrases I ever learned to say in Greek, and it certainly suited this moment) and she left me to settle in. I dropped all my bags in the main room (there would be time to relocate them later) found a big bottle of cold water in the refrigerator (thank you again, amazing host!), threw open the balcony doors to let the breeze in, and crumpled into the kitchen chair. The sea sang victoriously in my ears: I made it! I did not die en route from my own stupid notions of economy, nor was I attacked by cartoonish, imaginary bands of marauders!

After that initial crucible, my two days in Siteia were heavenly. As I stated several weeks ago, when I very briefly summarized this leg of my trip, I relaxed and did little else. Both nights, I wandered back into the town center (a beautiful, soothing walk, actually, when not in the heat of the afternoon or carrying 40 pounds of gear), which had an active, yet subdued waterfront night life - many restaurants, some with live music to accompany the background sounds of the sea. I favored a place where I sat, both times, under an open-air canopy, close to a boardwalk and marina. One night a football game was on a big screen TV, the next night the entertainment was simply occasional passersby. One of my servers was a conversational Romanian woman, who explained that she had met and married a Greek man and lived in Crete for the last twenty years. I loved and mildly envied her romantic, multicultural story and was grateful that she shared it. I ate - I ate a lot of delicious food (gluten-free spaghetti and chicken kebab, as I mentioned in that other post). Not all of it was authentic Greek food but I was giving myself a break on all fronts - again, my objective here, after almost 6 weeks of travel and in the face of mounting exhaustion, was just to rest all parts of myself.

One day I took a morning bus to Vai, a town near the northeast tip of Crete, which boasts a lovely palm tree forest that segues into equally lovely, multi-hued hills. These features formed a crescent of land that hugged the brightest, bluest water I have ever witnessed - all objects solid and liquid that I saw there were interpreted by my senses like pastel paints - as I gazed in grateful wonder at scrub brush, shattered rock on rumpled hillsides, crinkled sheets of sea water, promontories from which tiny figures dived, I was surprised the dyes did not drip in my eyes; as I breathed in and out in unconscious sympathy with the calming waves, I almost expected to smell the chemicals in these freshly-applied strokes of light and color.

After two days in Siteia I was back on a bus, this time en route almost all the way to the other end of northern Crete - Rethimno. The pleasure of observing the countryside without having to watch the roads was a gift in itself on Crete. Mountains towering near and far, great valleys folding depth into the land. Towns built in bays and sometimes mysteriously founded on tall, narrow fingers of rock inland and seemingly far, to my ignorant eyes, from any valuable resources other than the supply of aesthetic self-justification provided just by issuing, like a declaration, from this fold in this diverse landscape. It is here because the town and its people were pleased for it to be here: that was its reason, its nourishment. I also witnessed a towering, unfinished highway - a piece of modernity in medias res that therefore loomed like some crumbled thread of antiquity from waves of landscape, dripping storeys-tall pillars and planted there as evidence that we bus riders were just meek descendants from the glorious mists of a Cretan Middle Earth story.

Rethimno was my last destination in Crete. It provided further respite and a bit of needed socialization. I had a pair of awesome hosts - both young, both academics. We shared a number of pleasant chats; along with their respective interests and some fun stories about their lives, I learned a bit more about the regrettable economic situation in Greece, which

nevertheless had not killed their optimism and enthusiasm for life.

From where I stayed, I could meander more or less north about six blocks to the beach, or, after about half that distance, I could veer northwest and head about a mile into Rethimno’s historical center, which I explored from Goura Gate on the south down to the Aegean Sea, and from Kountouriotou street on the east to, again, the Sea on the west.

This town center contained a lot of close, cobbled streets and lanes. Some streets were broad, many were foot traffic-heavy. Some roads were narrow enough that only people or cycles could reliably navigate them (but then, I am thinking in Western terms, where we afford vehicles a lot more space than they necessarily need). One particularly lovely spot is near Rimondo Fountain - here is a winding convergence of paths that is shaded by an ivy canopy and contains a cluster of shops and restaurants. Behind the fountain was a narrow, miss-it-if-you’re-not-looking-for-it footpath where I enjoyed a delicious, light dinner at a great restaurant called To Parastratimo, sitting outdoors under an awning, while gazing westward past a stone staircase, atop which a cat rested in the setting sun.

During my two days in Rethimno I also strolled through the broad, albeit uneventful Mikrasiaton Square, where I had a lovely, exterior view of Mosque Neratzes. My big activity was a half-day visit to the Fortezza Castle: a very old Venetian fortress, from the time when this once-formidable, Italian city-state ruled a large portion (if not all, I do not know) of Crete, before the Moors conquered the area.

Far below the fortress, at the foot of its walls winds a seaside lane which offers more beautiful views of the sea and, looking east and west, the hazy majesty of other, distant parts of the island. To the west, in particular, the mountains rearing up from the far end of the island loom almost like a bank of blue-white clouds; they were like giant faces, made faint behind their own voluminous breath.

Crete: what a place of wonder and beauty and friendly people. As fate would have it, my final day there finally saw the hot spell break. It reached only into the low eighties Fahrenheit that day, and I wished I could have spent more time there. Alas, I was already fated to board a plane to London, and so I bid a fond farewell, silently promising myself to return some day.