Crete: Kritsa - 14 June 2000

Crete: Kritsa
14 June 2000

Location	Kritsa, Sunflower Landscape Eastern Crete, walk 1 and 2 I went on a package tour to Crete from June 12 to 20. My base was in Malia but I rented a car for the first few days. This page is about the first full day when we went to Kritsa, above Agios Nikolaos. We were going to do walk 2 in the guidebook, the Kritsa Gorge. But it turned out to be too hard. Fortunately it has the same starting point as walk 1, Kritsa to Lato, so we just backtracked a bit. Walk 1 turned out to be much easier.

Weather	It was a beautiful sunny day with temperatures into the high twenties. Quite different from my latest walks in the UK.
Click on the images to see larger versions.

	This is near the start of walk in the village of Kritsa. With the pink hollyhocks against the whitewashed walls it could be a poster from the official tourist bureau of Greece.

Another romantic picture from the same alley. Notice the electricity meter. They appear on each and every house. The vine on top of the doorway is a grapevine. Of course.

	Kritsa Gorge just where my companion and I chose to give up. The pink oleander bush beckons but it was just too much scrambling on boulders that had been washed slippery by water.

A sunwashed donkey trail between Kritsa and Lato. In other places it was narrower with low, scratchy bushes on either side.

	Lato is a Doric site near Kritsa. It is named after Leto, mother of Artemis and Apollo. Why this stone with the halfcircular incision was raised was not explained but it seemed significant to me. Somehow I took it as a comment on the abiding landscape and the city that now lies in ruins.

This is the landscape that you can see from the ancient site of Lato.

	A doorway in Lato. Who walked through it before me? Laughing children? Stern men in togas? And now a tourist with a digital camera. What would Leto think of that?

On the dusty road between Lato and Kritsa we found this shrine. The Greek attitude towards safe driving baffles me. They take enormous and unnecessary risks. But when someone dies on a road, they put a shrine there. The only thing that I can compare it with is Californian's attitude towards earthquakes.

	After a lazy meal of wineleaves, we drove down to Agios Nikolaos. I took this picture from a cafe near the bus station. The inky sea against the pale mountains with the moon hanging over them appealed to me. At this cafe I had yoghurt with honey and fresh fruit for the first time. We also tried a clear, cold cinnamon drink. It was like flat, cold storebrand Coke - an acquired taste.