Hania and Samaria Gorge

6 am docking at the town of Hania, where we did a walking tour around the harbour and commercial areas before we could check in to our hotel.  The old town here has ruins left from Venetian and Turkish invaders.  It`s apparently a late night party town also.  While at breakfast, a loud, drunken and very good looking group of locals knocked over their table and left piles of broken glass, then drove off on motorcycles.  And we had previously been told that the Greeks don’t really break plates when they party.

We have noticed that a lot of the young men here are really well built.  They don`t have jobs so they must spend a lot of time working out!  Unemployment is still high, particularly with the under 30 crowd, with their recent economic troubles.  Well dressed  people wander the streets at all hours in the cities, in no hurry, since they have no jobs to go  to in the morning.  They have no money to move out of their parents homes, but seem to have the money to look good and go out on the town.

The following morning, another 5 am wakeup, we are hiking the Samaria Gorge, largest in Europe.  After a public bus along winding mountain roads, we were woken up by the chilly winds at the start of the 16 km trek.

The first couple of hours were downhill on rocky terrain, with amazing scenery, especially when we reached the dry river bed of bleached white stones.  The gorge is closed in winter when a river rages through.  Nothing too dangerous, but people have been killed here by rockslides or by the river when they sneaked in when the trek was closed.  At about the halfway point, at the bottom, is the deserted ruins of a town whose people were displaced to make this a hiking area.  Here there were some semi-tame kri kri goats, found only on Crete, who we fed leaves.  We had to cross a few wooden bridges across some water, and after the narrow canyon close to the end we reached the rest area at the end, with giant one liter beers which were well deserved after the blazing heat at the bottom of the canyon.  We had seen people dropping off the trail looking like they had heat stroke, but there is nowhere to go but to the end.

After that we had to hike another couple of km to the town of Agia Roumeli and our hotel.  We could walk a block to the warm clear Mediterranean Ocean for a dip.  I still had time for a fish spa, about the only thing other than a couple of restaurants and shops in this sleepy little town.  You stick your feet in a tank with little fish who nip at your feet.  A few of us had a late night in the only bar in town, where we were given shots of the local brandy, raki, and tequila.