Crete Is Gorges
May 8-16, 2023
Easter is both a perfect and terrible time to travel in Europe. It’s perfect because you get the Friday and Monday surrounding Easter as paid time off, so you can take a longer trip without having to use vacation days. It’s terrible because everyone (particularly in Germany) wants to travel that weekend, making everything far more expensive than it should be. We spent hours looking for literally any place we could go for a reasonable amount of money and were miffed that there wasn’t a single palatable option. Flights to Crete were €400 per person; a train to the Netherlands was affordable but the cheapest hotels in Amsterdam that weekend were €300 a night; flying to the south of France wasn’t too bad, but a rental car was nearly €100 a day. Mazz had some work to take care of that weekend anyway so we decided not to force it. Then she looked at the prices to Crete the following month and saw that we could fly there for €100 per person if we just waited a bit. She asked her boss if he cared if she worked through Easter and used those days off the following month instead. He did not. It was decided: this year we would be celebrating Easter in May.
The weather in Crete was supposed to be warm but not hot during the day and never actually cold at night, so we decided to try and make this an early-season camping trip. There appeared to be plenty of great established spots to camp along the coast, and if we so dared, some beaches with no facilities that we could hike in to free camp. We wanted to be flexible on this trip; traveling in shoulder season means you can generally come and go wherever you want without needing a plan. We wanted to camp, but neither of us was particularly set on making this a full-on backpacking vacation. So, we split the difference and loaded up all of our ultralight camping gear into a big, clunky suitcase that would live in the back of a rental car. We each brought small backpacks that fit under the plane seat which would hold enough of our gear if we decided to do an overnight somewhere away from the car.
We got into Heraklion late in the evening and took the bus into the city center, where we had rented a room for the night. We generally don’t care to spend too much time much in cities on trips like this, and an evening wandering through the old town and harbor was enough to know that we preferred to move on to someplace a little less populated. Still, sitting in the warm evening air under a massive tree on the terrace of Guernica bar, sipping local wine and watching street cats play in the branches, we were both very pleased to be back in Greece.
The next morning we took the bus back to the airport to grab our rental car, a Toyota Yaris with a trunk that had just barely enough space to fit our big, dumb suitcase. The guy working there gave us a map of the island and some tips for places we might and might not want to go camping. He wasn’t sure we should hike into Glyka Nera beach to stay overnight, which had been our plan. It was still early enough in the season that the taverna on that beach wasn’t open yet, and there was no assurance that the bathroom was functional or supplying potable water. We thanked him for the advice and took off in our red bull, which we named “Minos,” southward across the island.
Our first lunch in the town of Agia Galini was a fun reminder of just how excellent the food can be in Greece. Mazz got giant prawns cooked with fresh green peppercorns and roasted eggplant covered in tomatoes and herbs, while Kirb opted for a big ol’ plate of gyros. There was a lot of contented sighing and satisfied eye-rolling from both of us. Happy and full, we headed over to “Camping No Problem,” situated not far from the beach and a short walk from the town. We were the only tent campers there and were able to get a nice spot that fit our car, tent, and hammock snugly. The grounds had a communal dishwashing room with a refrigerator, plenty of bathrooms and showers, a pool, and a restaurant and bar that seemed to be frequented by more than just the people staying on site. The walk back into Agia Galini took us alongside plenty of tourist-trap beachside restaurants with scores of unmanned loungers and parasols. The menus were often in German, as were the voices we heard from other tourists around us. Everyone in RVs at Camping No Problem had been speaking Deutsch.
Agia Galini is a cute little waterfront town that doesn’t feel fully like a tourist destination or a sleepy fishing village, but rather something in-between. As we walked through the winding, hilly streets, we saw some guys breaking down a ~100-kilo tuna on a table in the middle of the path and stopped to admire the enormous, beautiful fish. We decided we were coming back to that restaurant for dinner to eat it, which was probably their aim in cutting it apart in the middle of the street.
That fish tasted just as good as it looked. Onar Restaurant served it up carpaccio-style and we ordered roasted eggplant with mizithra cheese and a freshly caught swordfish steak to go alongside. Fresh seafood on the water is hard to beat. When we got back to camp, we decided to head over to the bar and socialize. We struck up a conversation with an Afghani videographer who had been living in Greece for years and a group of Germans who came to the island every year. The bar was playing music off of YouTube and, unsurprisingly, after a few drinks Kirb decided to be the DJ. The raki was flowing: If you make friends with any Greek bartender, they will continue to pour you complementary shot after shot until you decide to stop accepting them, maybe even after. In these situations, Kirb is particularly bad at self-control. These bad decisions extend to being a DJ as well, as the more he drinks, the more likely he is to put on his own bands at the end of the night and weird people out. He definitely did that here. The next morning came fast and rough.
We hadn’t originally planned on staying at Camping No Problem for two nights, but neither of us particularly wanted to break camp and move on that day, so we decided to find a hike in the area. After a scenic drive through Kourtaliotiko Gorge, we stopped for lunch in the next small town, Asomatos, and randomly pulled into the taverna. The food there wasn’t particularly great, but the view from the terrace was something else. We were trying to find a hiking trail that took us from the town down to the beach and set a pin on a trailhead we spotted on google maps. The directions took us down some dirt roads that got progressively shoddier until the rocks were so big we were afraid we were going to wreck the undercarriage of the rental car. Almost immobilized, we had to precariously turn the car around surrounded by boulders and dilapidated metal fences. Then we tried to take the dirt road out the other side and met up with construction, forcing us to precariously flip the car around on a cliffside with little room to maneuver. Finally, defeated, we decided to just go to a designated trail head parking lot and do the same hike that all the other tourists were doing.
To get to Preveli Beach, you park up at the top of the cliff and walk down around 450 stone steps to get to the waterfront. Preveli Gorge is a natural palm grove, dense and seemingly out of place with all the flora around it when seen from the cliffs above. You can’t go particularly far back into the gorge before the trail ends, but it is really a special, strange, lush, and beautiful place. And when you’re done, hiking the 450 steps back up the cliff definitely makes you feel like you got your blood pumping for the day.
On the way back to the campsite, we stopped at a nearby stone monastery, not sure if it was abandoned or not. Entry was €5 for the pair of us, and not sure exactly what we were paying to see, we decided to go in and explore. Even inside, it was still unclear if the place was inhabited or not. The only other person we saw was a gruff, old, bearded monk who looked after the museum and made sure you didn’t take pictures inside. Fittingly, most of the artwork inside the museum depicted gruff, old, bearded monks.
The wind was really howling when we drove back through Kourtaliotiko Gorge. We parked on a pull-out and walked to the entrance for the “Big Waterfall,” which was designated on the map on our phones but not on any road signs. The wind nearly blew us over several times walking down the steps into the canyon. There was a small church tucked away at the bottom, next to a waterfall that was almost imperceptible from the trail but was actually quite big once you got close and looked through the surrounding rocks. As we traversed the island, we saw tons of little churches tucked away in hard-to-reach areas on Crete. We wondered if their inaccessibility was a feature and not a bug, meant to reinforce that worship is pain.
We dropped the car off at the campsite and decided to walk to a nearby restaurant in some guy’s house called “Charlie’s Place” where he makes all the food by himself. There were two dogs laying around in the parking lot and as we passed them we said, “Hi dogs,” as we always do when we see dogs, and one of them got up and decided to go on a walk with us. He followed us all the way out to the main road and then down the dirt road to Charlie’s Place, and when it turned out Charlie’s Place wasn’t open for the season yet, he followed us all the way back down to the beach where we got gyros and a Greek salad at a place on the water. When dinner was done and we started back to the campsite, the dog appeared again out of nowhere and started walking with us again. This dog deciding to be our friend and travel companion made our whole night. The excitement was dampened though when we returned to camp and found two French bikepackers had set up directly next to us in an otherwise empty grove full of camping spots. Even worse, they had strung up their sweaty, stinky bike clothes mere inches from our hammock, rendering it unusable. Who does that?
Crete is a mountainous island, so we were looking forward to exploring the higher elevations as well as the beaches. We’d been trying for weeks to get a hold of a place called Guesthouse Alonia to stay in their hiking cabins up in the mountains, but they weren’t returning our emails or calls. So when it was time to move on from Camping No Problem we decided to try and stay at an “Eco Camp” surrounded by trails that was also in the hills. After several hours of slow-going, windy mountain roads, we arrived at the Eco Camp and found the front gate locked shut. After yet another extremely tight car turnaround on a cliffside, we decided it was probably time to give up on trying to camp in the mountains this early in May, but we could still spend the day there. A search of restaurants in the area revealed one in a tiny, out-of-the-way mountain town that had stellar reviews, so we headed that way.
Set in an idyllic garden populated with olive trees and goats, Taverna To Faragi was easily the best meal we ate on Crete. We ordered mountain greens stewed in olive oil, fava puree (a Greek favorite we hadn’t seen on the island until now), and boureki - a casserole made with thinly-sliced potato, zucchini, sesame, and four kinds of cheese. The good-natured owner of the restaurant also told us of a nice hike just down the road where we could walk off the considerable amount of food we had just consumed.
It was overcast but still a nice temperature and there were few other hikers inside of Deliana Gorge that afternoon. At some point, a thin slab of concrete had been poured over the rocks as a trail, but it had long-since broken apart. The path was dotted with strange plants called Dragon Arum that have long purple spikes called “spadix” extending from the center. When they first open, these plants smell like rotten meat to attract flies for pollination, but they weren’t currently making the trail stink. The path followed a dried-out river path up into the hills where it eventually became fenced off before joining back up with the main road, letting you know it was time to turn around. Deliana Gorge was filled with beautiful wildflowers and old, enormous trees and we enjoyed ourselves on that hike thoroughly.
We drove back down to the northwestern coast and paid for a tiny wooden shack to sleep in for the night. Our backs were both acting up after two nights on the ground, so we figured it was worth it to “splurge” on a bed for the night (€35). After am unmemorable dinner with a nice view at a “panorama” restaurant in a nearby town, we drank wine and listened to harp music on the beach in front of our campsite at sunset, surprised we had the entire shoreline all to ourselves. The next morning as we made breakfast and drank our coffee in front of our wooden shack, we were joined by a surprising number of cats, content to lay around in the sun and play with one another in our vicinity and not particularly interested in trying to acquire our vittles.
Elafonissi Beach is the most famous beach on Crete due to its unique “pink sand” and clear blue water. We hadn’t planned on going there, but since our mountain time hadn’t worked out and we were already on that side of the island, we figured it was worth a trip. A lot of other people visiting Crete had the same idea: cars were lined up for blocks down the pedestrian-clogged road leading to the beach entrance. Still, we found a spot to stash Minos without much effort and joined in with all the other tourists. Unsurprisingly, the beach was really lovely, though the sand wasn’t as pink in person as one can make it seem with an Instagram filter. The water was gorgeously blue and warm even in early May. We tromped around and explored the coastline and then read books for a while in the sun, but there were strong winds that day, so after a few hours in the elements we decided to move on to our next campsite.
We thought we might rent another little cabin at Grammeno Camping, but once we saw the beachside spot we could have to ourselves with our tent we decided it was just fine sleeping on the ground again, especially when the ground was soft sand. This place was full of adorable little A-frames to rent, and once again, we were the only tent campers among a smattering of Germans in RVs. We were also the only patrons at the nearby restaurant Houmas for most of our dinner there, which included giant beans cooked with spinach and feta that Mazz was particularly enamored with. Grammeno was our favorite place we paid to stay on Crete and we wished we had arrived there a night earlier instead of renting the wooden shack. We would have stayed longer, but we had to move on the next morning so we could be ready for our big hike in the Samaria Gorge.
The Samaria Gorge is a national park, Biosphere Reserve, and the most popular outdoor destination in Crete. It lands on a lot of people’s hiking bucket lists, and we were no exception - we’d wanted to do it for years and made it a priority for this trip. Figuring out how to navigate the transportation to and from the gorge wasn’t entirely straightforward, but eventually we settled on staying in a small waterfront village called Sougia, taking an early morning bus up to the trailhead, and then catching a boat back to Sougia from the end of the hike. The only way to get to Sougia is to drive along the long, windy mountain road that deposits you down on the beach or to arrive by boat.
We arrived in Sougia in the early afternoon and found the village mostly devoid of tourists. We were the only people eating in the seaside restaurant we chose, and though its reviews online were good, the pizza Kirb ordered was one of the grosser ones he’s eaten in the many, many pizzas of his life. We had booked a place earlier that morning on the edge of town with free cancelation, and upon arriving and seeing how empty the town was, we decided to see if we could score one with a waterfront view for the same price. Sure enough, after asking around at a few places, we called a phone number and had a fairly unintelligible conversation with a man who said he would be by the property momentarily. The character that stepped out of that beat-to-shit old Mercedes was like something out of a movie. He was a short, older gentleman with scraggly stubble, wearing an enormous, ill-fitting suit. He showed us the room, and after some understandable confusion about us wanting to stay “only tonight” instead of “only two nights,” he informed us that the rate was €45, “ONLY CASH.” He pulled out a disheveled wad of hundreds - maybe thousands - of Euros, added our €50 to the pile, and fished out our €5 in change. This place was the exact same price as the other room, which we promptly canceled, and we enjoyed our seaside view from the balcony with some wine and olives.
The dawn bus to the trailhead the next morning showed up 30 minutes late, but it cost less than €5 each to take us an hour through the snaking mountain roads and deposit us right at the entrance to the park. There were lots of other hikers at the trailhead and the first kilometer or so was pretty crowded until people naturally began to separate and go their own pace. Most of the people around us at the start of the hike were Spanish, and we learned quickly that older Spanish women literally never stop talking the entire time they hike. The trail goes down steep, rocky switchbacks for the first two hours or so, then continues for long stretches over scree and boulders all the way to the bottom. We saw a girl at the start of the trail in flimsy sandals wearing only a sports bra that didn’t cover a fraction of her already-sunburned back and shoulders. We still wonder if her ankles ever made it to the bottom of the gorge intact.
After a few hours of pine forests and bubbling creeks, we arrived at the old Samaria Settlement for a lunch break and water refill. There were lots of water refill areas along the trail and we were happy to find that they provided crisp, delicious mountain water instead of the calcium-leaden tap water on Crete, which while technically potable, the locals refuse to drink. The Samaria Settlement still has rock structures from previous inhabitants that lived in the gorge for thousands of years up until 1962, when the park was created.
The final third of the hike takes you along the most famous stretch called “the Gates,” which includes towering rock cliffs that extend 300 meters high but make you pass through a slot canyon that narrows to only 3 meters wide. It is truly a sight to behold. In this area, you almost never have any stretch of the gorge to yourself without other hikers in view; we couldn’t imagine what the hike must be like in the high season. Supposedly, 2,000-3,000 hikers a day do the Samaria Gorge in the summer, which sounds really, truly miserable. We were sweaty and tired after doing it in 70-degree overcast weather. The same hike with scorching temperatures, direct sun, and thousands of people clogging the trail? Nein, danke. This hike was gorgeous and we’re glad we did it, but it didn’t quite live up to the hype. We’re definitely glad that we did it in early May, when we did.
There was only one boat back to Sougia and it wasn’t leaving for several hours after we had finished the hike. We traversed the gorge particularly quickly: The average time for the 13.3-km, 1100-meter descent is 6-7 hours and we completed it in 5:15, with occasional stops for rest and lunch. That meant we had ample time to eat celebratory gyros in Agia Roumeli and drink carafes of white wine by the water. There’s a lot to love about Greece, but one thing in particular we love is a liter of crisp, cold, local white wine for €8 at a waterfront bar.
We were surprised to see that a lot of people were getting off the boat at Sougia, but they all seemed go straight to tour busses that were waiting in the parking lot and none of them actually went into the village itself. We were the only ones who got in our car and drove over to the beach on the other side of town, where it is legal to free camp. There were several other campers already set up when we arrived, but we were still able to find a flat, sandy pitch next to some hammock trees. We picked up some groceries from the tiny store in town and an unmarked bottle of local white wine (which only costs €2.50 in the shop) and cooked our dinner with an unobstructed view of the ocean.
Camping on the beach in Sougia was exceptionally nice, save for one caveat: there was nowhere to go to the bathroom. When you free camp in nature, you make your own bathroom wherever you can hide yourself away, but there wasn’t exactly a grove of trees to make yourself sparse in those parts. It’s quite literally the edge of the town and residences can see you from the other side of the road. There was a shower on the beach surrounded by the thinnest, see-through green netting, but this was not the sort of place you had to feel weird or self-conscious about bathing naked in public. If anything, you’re the weird one if you’ve got a problem with it. But there was no designated - or ever reasonable - place to just go and relieve yourself, and that felt weird. For that, you had to go into town and find a café.
Sitting in the early morning light, drinking coffee and looking out on the sea, we very much did not want our Crete vacation to come to an end. If there had been a porta potty nearby, we could have stayed on that beach forever. But the reality of the situation was that we needed to start driving back to Heraklion, which was several hours and many winding mountain roads away.
We stopped for lunch at a place called Georgia’s Traditional Taverna that had excellent reviews and soon learned why for ourselves. Again, we were the only patrons, and Georgia herself came out and sat at our table to greet us and tell us everything that was on the menu, or more specifically, which of it we should eat. She promised that her giant beans were “the best beans we would ever eat in our lives.” That was a bold promise, and Mazz was particularly intrigued. They might not have been the best beans ever, but man, those were some really good beans. Weeks later, we’re still thinking about those Beans.
They really were some tasty beans, Georgia
With quite a bit of time to kill before needing to return the car and head to the airport, we decided to go shopping. We liked the vibe of Rethimno quite a bit. There was a cute little waterfront port area, lots of shops, and even though it catered to tourists, the town still felt like it retained its own personality and charm. Somehow, we had completely maxed out our weight allowance in our big, dumb suitcase despite all our gear being lightweight, so we didn’t buy anything in Rethimno, but there was plenty we wanted to.
For our final meal in Greece, we picked a place out by the airport in Heraklion called Magerio O Sofos, where, somehow, we were also the only patrons. We ordered a dish of lamb slow-cooked in yogurt that was delicious and filling. The proprietors brought us preserved figs and several kinds of raki after we finished and Kirb was nervous to put so much booze in him before the final five minutes in the rental car. Instead, we dropped the car off at the kiosk and then drank our own wine in the parking lot, like classy people do. The bottle was leftover from the night before and we went to great lengths to get ice to cool it down. It still tasted terrible, but we weren’t going to let it go to waste. At least, not all of it. We definitely didn’t finish the bottle.
In hindsight, we probably should have. The airport was hot and crowded and everyone was speaking German. We couldn’t believe as we walked through the terminal that five consecutive gates were all flying to Germany. We looked at the departure board and 8 of the 16 flights departing Heraklion were going to Deutschland. The Krauts just love this place. We waited for our plane to board, and waited, then got on a bus to the plane, and waited there even longer, but eventually we got to our seats. Then an announcement came on that something was wrong with the plane, and they would have to turn it off and back on again. An hour later, they informed us that they found the computer they needed to address hidden away in a panel somewhere and someone was trying to fix the problem. About an hour after that, they said they had fixed the problem, but now there was a new problem: the Berlin Airport has a midnight curfew and we weren’t going to make it in time. They were going to fly us to Hannover instead and put us on a 3+ hour bus to Berlin from there. Then they made us wait 2 more hours on the tarmac before taking off.
The 3-hour flight that should have gotten us home around 11:00 pm instead got us there after 7 am the next morning. It was a pretty miserable trek, but thankfully, it was SO miserable that the airline company was obligated to reimburse us for our misery. The amount they had to pay was almost as much as our entire Greek vacation had cost. We’ll take 12 hours of misery for a free vacation any day.
This was our third adventure to Greece and we’re sure it won’t be the last. The food, culture, and general vibe of the Greek Islands is tremendous in every way. Crete was more mountainous and rugged than we expected, but it still had plenty of warm and beautiful spots to get comfortable. As always, we’re glad we came in shoulder season. If we come back again, we’ll do it at the end of summer so we can actually spend some quality time in the mountains. Chances are though, we’ll find a new Greek island to explore instead.