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Woke early at the hostel in Iraklion after a pretty terrible night of sleep. Far more people snore than I had previously realized. We walked back in the direction we had travelled the previous evening to the bus station to catch a ride over to Hania. The bus took ride took maybe three hours and was very beautiful although I slept most of the time so didnt really get to see as much as I should have. When we arrived in Hania the plan was to find a car to rent so we started wandering the streets looking for places. After a wandering a bit we realized most of them were closed for siesta but we asked some locals and found one that seemed reasonable. It was 27 euro per day for a tiny little daiwoo with an 800cc engine that was probably around 1L. It was a little lime green speed machine with hardly enough room for three people and backpacks. We drove it into the city a little ways to buy ferry tickets home and were lost in roughly 2 minutes. Driving in cities in crete is probably one of the most stressful crazy things you can imagine.
After driving a bit we decided to just park randomly and walk to the place were tickets were sold. Bought tickets and made it back to our car. Aaron started the sweet machine up only to realize that any time you idled the car would kill. So the dilemma was should we try to drive the car back through insane traffic to the car dealer to get another or walk back there which was quite far and leave the car on some random street we couldnt describe the location of. We decided to go for it and Aaron was elected the driver as he was already in the drivers seat. It was a pretty hilarious ride around town, we got even more lost in the process and drove around for at least 20 mins. Aaron's method to keep the car from killing at stops was to pull the e-brake to stop and continuously rev the car in neutral. This is not the easiest thing to do as you can imagine and basically the car was killing all over the place jerking around as he dropped the clutch and pulled the ebrake. We managed to get there eventually with the ebrake
smelling awful and explained that we needed another car. Maybe it was fate that the car was shit as I had left my charger and battery for my camera in the outlet there and would have been completely screwed without it. Turns out to get another car we needed to drive another 11km in the direction we were headed to another branch of the rental place. The drive didnt turn out so bad as it was only one main road all the way there. At the next rental place they gave us a new car, this time a hyundai tiny blue piece of crap. Luckily the car worked properly and we continued driving on to Falasarna beach. The roads in Greece are quite narrow and probably the most winding of any ive been on. The roads were through some absolutely gorgeous mountains and small greek villages it was one of the most beautiful drives ive ever taken (also a bit scary as there were shear cliffs along the roadside with little or no barricade). We made it to where the beach was and travelled down out of the mountains on a cool twisting road. It seemed that this area is
what Greece is really like without the tourism. There were goats roaming in various places, chickens and roosters, tomato fields, and sweet little villages scattered along the way. We finally arrived at the beach and it was simply amazing. Incredibly clear blue water, mountains a few kms away, and fine soft sand. The beach was also basically deserted as the buses that bring people from the cities had left already and there are no hotels being built here as the government will not allow it. We found nice little cove, built a fire circle and set up our tents. We did a bit of swimming afterwards and just relaxed in the sun on an absolutely beautiful place to be. Later that night we got a bit of food at one of two empty restaurants a ways from the beach. The food was delicious and the waiter was friendy. He even brought us a small bottle of raki which had about 10 shots worth in it to drink after dinner free of charge. Later he came back and gave us all another shot and had one himself along with us. We finally ended the long day relaxing by a fire on the beach with the waves crashing right in front of us and a stunning night sky hardly hindered at all by city lights.
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Kimma
non-member comment
It sounds so romantic