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Crete, Greece
By Sheryl Oliver | October 11, 2008
on our last day in Crete, I hiked the Samarian Gorge. This is the largest Gorge in Europe, and it was definitely one of the best days yet in Greece.
This was going to be a close call, because we had to make our boat at 8pm. Our hotel receptionist told us there was NO WAY this could be done, but we decided that we still needed to go and we took the chance.
There were 5 guys and 4 girls in our group who decided to do the Gorge. We split up though (The guys were extremely concerned we would slow them down…lame).
We woke up around 5am and caught a bus up the mountain. This took an hour or two. By now I am used to the crazy, crazy, crazy bus drivers of Greece. However, going up a sharp, curvy mountain with no railings on it really does not exactly put one to ease…
We got to the top of the mountain, and began our hike. This was a downhill hike, and I can’t even describe how beautiful it was. A scary part of it was when we heard rocks actually falling down the cliff. There were signs all over the gorge that said…extreme danger, walk quickly. They weren’t lying…
Throughout the gorge was an ancient village with ruins, which was a nice little bonus. It rained a little, but other than that it was beautiful.
After a nice 5 hour hike, we ended up in a little town. We hung out at the black sand beach there and ate lunch with the guys. The part of this that made it unsure if we would make our ship, was that we needed to get on a ferry to take us to another town, and then take a bus back to Chania. From Chania we needed to grab our bags from our hotel, and take yet another bus to the port to get on our ship back to Athens. Even though this ended up being doable, we were extremely nervous because transportation in Greece is NOT reliable by any means.
For example, some of the guys took a bus the day before where they started out late, and the driver stopped halfway through for an hour long coffee break.
Luckily, none of this happened today, and we made it right on time at 8pm to the port.
That’s all for now. Have to get back to class. I will write about the best weekend yet here in Greece soon…
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