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Published: July 24th 2010
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Crete - Dini in the clear blue water at Gerani beachWe went island hopping through the Greek islands. The trip started by flying to Crete from the UK, we then moved through the Cyclades islands by ferry. The islands we visited were Santorini, Ios, Paros and Mykonos, then we finished up on the mainland in Athens. This whole trip went for just over 3 weeks, and this is what we got up to...
CRETE (7 nights)
Crete is one of the largest (if not the biggest) islands in Greece and lies south of the Cyclades Island chain. We stayed in a nice family run resort/complex in the village of Gerani. It was 10 mins on the bus to the old town of Rethymnon. Old Rethymnon town is a maze of narrow alleys with tavernas and shops everywhere. We went and visited an old fortress that overlooked the sea and the whole of Rethymnon.
One thing we really wanted to do was walk through the Samaria Gorge. Its the biggest gorge in Europe, 16km long and about 500m deep. We started early in the morning when a bus picked us up from Gerani at 5:50am!! The bus took us up into the mountains to a small village called Omalos
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Crete - Local food(Moussaka and stuffed peppers) and beer (Mythos) where we started the trek. It was really cold up in the mountains that time of the morning, but we soon warmed up after a 2km rocky decline into the gorge. The gorge was amazing with fresh water running through it and enormous cliffs/walls. We took lots of photos but they dont show the enormity of it! At parts of the trek there are signs that say "Dont Stop, Walk Fast" because of loose rocks falling from the cliffs. We didnt see any, but im sure it would be 'good night Irene' if any rocks hit you!
In the middle of the gorge there was a small village called Samaria (hence the name) and it was used as a shelter for the locals during times of invasion. There is no way to get to the village unless you walk... it would have been a great hiding spot because it was hard to get to and only accessible in summer due to the amount of rushing water in winter. The gorge opened up on the south coast to a joy beach with blue water and black pebbles... Great spot to put your feet up after a 16km trek! We then
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Crete - Enjoying the view and the food at our hotel got a ferry and another bus back to the hotel and got home around 8pm... BIG day but worth every minute. Although, our legs didnt agree with us and were sore days after.
We also had a day visiting Granvoussa Island and Balos Lagoon. We took a ferry to Gramovoussa which is an island off the north west coast of Crete. It was a really nice place with clear blue water beaches (Nothing like Australia). Also you could see that Crete is sinking in the east and rising in the west because of the water marks on the cliffs surrounding the other side of the island. Across to the mainland from Gramvoussa is balos lagoon, which was also amazing, although it was a little windy.
Most nights we ate in Gerani village which was at the top of the hill from our hotel. The local food was joy, moussaka, tatziki, stuffed tomatoes, greek salad and bread with olive oil. Cant forget the Pita Gyros which we ate almost everyday, its pork carved off a spit, wrapped in pita with tatziki, tomato, onion and fries... a tourist staple diet... Really cheap!!
SANTORINI (4 nights)
After Crete,
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Crete - Narrow alleys of old Rethymnon we took the ferry over to Santorini and stayed at Perissa beach. Santorini was once a huge volcano but the volcano collapsed creating a Caldera. The main towns on the island are situated on the edge of the cliffs surrounding the Caldera.
On the first day we got there, we organised to do some scuba diving. As we already have our Open Water ticket which limits us to 18 metres, we wanted to do our deep dive which is part of the Advanced Open Water course and allows us to go down 30 metres. We were also booked our Peak Performance Bouyancy dive which teaches you to control your bouyancy using your lungs.
The following day we did our dives. First we did the deep dive which was pretty insane. We took a boat from Perissa to a small island called Aspronisi which is a remenant of the collapsed volcano. The dive started on the beach and we swam out to a depth of about 6 meters then all of a sudden there was nothing!!! Pure abyss... a wall going straight down 200 meters! We went down to 38 meters stopping on a tiny ledge on the wall.
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Crete - Fortress at Rethymnon Part of the course was to experience nitrogen narcosis. This is caused by too much nitrogen in your blood, generally at depths below 30 meters. It causes the brain to play tricks so we had to carry out brain excercises (which we were capable of doing at the surface) to show what it does. When we got back to the top the answers to the excercises that we thought we got right were completely wrong! Tasks such as spelling your name backwards and mathematic sums. It was very uncomfortable to breathe at that depth, you are breathing in 5 times as much air in one breath than you do at the surface. It was definitely an experience but no need to do it again.
The next dive was doing excerises designed to teach you how to use your breathing to control your bouyancy. It was basically things like skimming across the bottom and picking up weights as you go along, you have fill your lungs to counteract the extra weight. Not as easy as it sounds!!!
We also saw the famous Santorini sunset and cliché white buildings with blue roofs and doors sitting on the edge of the
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Crete - Dini in the lookout caldera. On the last night we went to the town of Óia at the very end of the caldera, we had dinner on the roof of a really nice restaurant and watched the sunset... how romantic.
IOS (4 nights)
Ios is an Aussie party island, there are literally more australian party goers than there are greek locals!! It is a nocturnal island, quiet by day and raging by night... so that is the way we spent our time in Ios. We stayed in a place called "The Purple Pig" which is just up from the beach where all the aussie stay at "Far Out". We were told to steer clear of "Far Out" cos there are too many australians (aged 18 to 20) plastered on the local brew who think they are the world. So we just hung around the purple pig with a bunch of people until it was time to hit the town (1am).
At the purple pig we met some really cool people, Harry, Kyle, lauren and George (the best bartender). George would feed us full of free shots and keep the beers flowing until it was time to go out. Then we'd
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Crete - Old canons pile in a taxi and head to town. Its weird because you look at the area where all the bars are during the day and it just looks like apartments jammed together, then at night you see the flashing strobe lights and hear the thud of the bass. When you walk into the area it is a maze of narrow alleys that connect dozens of bars and clubs, it really amazing.
One of the days when we weren't feeling hungover we decided to do a sefood BBQ with our new Perth mate Kyle, he let slip that he was a chef so we thought it was a great idea!
The rest is a blur but i'm sure we enjoyed it!
PAROS (2 nights)
After Ios, we wanted to chill out for a bit to give the mind, body and soul a rest. We stayed at a place called "Surfing Beach" which should actually say "Wind Surfing Beach" because its bloody windy and there are no waves at all. Even though there was wind, we didn't feel any in the dog box we were staying in! It was like sleeping in a kennel. We weren't there
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Crete - Old Canon balls for long so we chilled on the beach, checked out the town Naoussa and ate pita gyros's!
MYKONOS (3 nights too many)
Still feeling partied out from Ios, Mykonos was on a whole other level. We had drinks every night but opted not to rage on with the european party-goers. By accident we packed our sleeping pills which was a blessing in disguise!
Each night there were big international house DJ's (Roger Sanchez, Benni Bennassi, Bob Sinclar, David Guetta etc) playing at the place we were staying, but they started at 1am and finished at 7am... not our cup of tea! When everyone was hungover from the night before and we were feeling fresh, we headed into Mykonos town which was very pretty. We went and saw the 5 iconic windmills and went to a place called Little Venice, where the ocean comes right up to the buildings.
It was an awesome town but we weren't in the right frame of mind to join the rest of the hooligans.
ATHENS (2 nights)
We thought that while we were in Greece it would be a shame not to do the famous Acropolis, so
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Crete - view from the lookout we went to Athens. We stayed in a hostel in the Plaka region, which has plenty of tavernas and shops around. The first day we got there we went for a walk around and ran into our friend Harry from Ios. He was staying at the Athens backpackers which has a rooftop bar overlooking the Acropolis, so we had to go there to have a few beers to watch the sun go down. At night the Parthenon is lit up and looks amazing from far away. We went to a bar that night after the backpackers and Dini had the most amazing cocktail. We dont know what it was called, only that it contained mango and chilli. The guy behind the bar enters cocktail making competitions so he obviously knew what he was doing. We felt rough the next day but we had to get up to do the Acropolis.
The Acropolis is basically a hill with ancient ruins including the Parthenon (Famous marble pillar thingo). There wasnt much information about the place except for the refurbishments that no one actually cares about... Another thing to tick off the list! We ended the day with some beers on top
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Crete - Fortress on the hill of the backpackers to say farewell to Greece.
It was an excellent trip and we thoroughly recommend it to anyone.
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