Her­sonis­sos

Crete

April 2008

Dear David,

 A Trip to Ier­ape­tra, The Dik­teon cave, Onions, a Meal Out, the Extend­ing Lad­der, a Vil­lage in The Clouds, Easter Fire­works, and Gay Tourists!

 Yes of course you are quite right, this month is my birth­day and I will be nine­teen, again. It is also 3 years since Steve passed away and since you ask, yes I do miss him some­times even still. I think this is only nat­ural after 22 years with the same per­son, don’t you?

 I am pleased that you think it would be a good idea to pub­lish these let­ters as a monthly trav­el­ogue, and you seem to have been doing your home­work on what Crete has to offer for the gay or les­bian trav­eller! Most gay travel sites only send vis­i­tors to Mykonos, which is all very well if all you want to do is party all night and sleep all day, but if you want to come to Crete as a gay tourist and see the sights and walk the walks, then you have to ‘do it your­self’. Any gay travel agents that do have hotel accom­mo­da­tion on Crete usu­ally only have the expen­sive ‘gay friendly’ (sup­pos­edly) hotels on offer, rather than cheaper self-catering apart­ments or bed and break­fast lodgings.

 With the arrival of April so we get the arrival of the first tourists even though many places are still not open and parts of the Port look like a lunar land­scape with piles of builders rub­ble and tim­ber where des­per­ate attempts are being made to rebuild and refur­bish before Easter which is the last week­end of the month.

 As this build­ing work reaches its peak, so does my pop­u­lar­ity in the vil­lage, to para­phrase a well-known British com­edy show ‘I am the only gay in the villa ge with a triple extend­ing alu­minium lad­der that goes up 7 metres.’ This to you may seem only a small thing but if you have ever seen a Greek lad­der you will know what I mean, as they usu­ally con­sist of two pieces of 3x2 with planks nailed across as the rungs, none too evenly spaced or level I might add. Why lad­ders should be so expen­sive here I do not know, any­way mine came from B and Q in Eng­land on the back of a truck cour­tesy of ‘King’ Philip the rov­ing rabbi.

 Around the house birds are nest­ing in every avail­able cor­ner, and a pigeon is try­ing to build a nest in a big flower pot on the top bal­cony, but at least this year I do not have a pair of those dare­devil, boy rac­ers of the sky, swal­lows. Why is it that swal­lows only seem to have two speeds, very fast and stop? Mind you the aer­ial acro­bat­ics and the swoops and about turns are really some­thing to watch. Dog didn’t like them much because they used to swoop down nearly on top of her. And they do like to come indoors too, I have had them swoop in the front door, do two cir­cuits of the lounge at break­neck speed and fly back out again!

 You will please to hear that the onions are in and are doing well, not only mine but George’s, which I planted of course. The first toma­toes are form­ing on the vines, and my pep­pers and other salad plants will soon be ready to plant out. I am also grow­ing lupins this year although I not quite sure why!

 Now I did say that there wouldn’t be any more trav­el­ogues but as I men­tioned a cou­ple of British guys were stay­ing here with a friend in Elounda fur­ther along the coast and they asked if I would drive them around for a cou­ple of days so hav­ing hired a suit­able vehi­cle from Manos at Orion Car Hire, I trot­ted off to Elounda to col­lect them one sunny morn­ing. Elounda takes about 40 min­utes from my place, skirt­ing around Agios Niko­laos to avoid the traf­fic, par­tic­u­larly as it was Wednes­day, which is mar­ket day. When­ever I go to Elounda I think of that Hay­ley Mills film from the 60’s, The Moon Spin­ners, which was filmed around that area. In the open­ing scenes they are on a bus which rounds a cor­ner and before them and down a hill is a small vil­lage, these days the view is con­sid­er­ably altered of course, with 5 star hotels and lots of other devel­op­ment on the hills opposite.

 Find­ing my tourists at the bus stop was easy and we headed off to Knos­sos, which they had never been to in spite of com­ing here sev­eral times. This also meant of course that I actu­ally drove back past my own house!

 The trip to Knos­sos takes about half an hour from my place, pro­vided the traf­fic is not too heavy, and there is now a new slip road off the National Road, which I missed, so had to go to the Mires turn­ing and come back again! The road works are nearly com­plete on the Knos­sos road with the addi­tion of a lot of mini round­abouts, which noone seems to know what to do with, but it was the usual chaos when we approached the hospital.

 I refused the offer of a free ticket to walk around Knos­sos with them as I have been there six times and sat in a cafe across the road with my crossword.

 Two hours later my charges reap­peared suf­fer­ing from ‘Knos­sos over­load’! It is a big site with many inter­est­ing fea­tures and you really do have to limit what you try and see on any one visit! Head­ing back into the city we found park­ing was best in the car park, it is so much eas­ier to pay €3 than drive round for ages try­ing to find a free place!

 The museum is cur­rently under­go­ing mas­sive ren­o­va­tion so there is a small dis­play open in a build­ing to the rear of the old museum, why they didn’t just build a com­pletely new museum out by Knos­sos I don’t really know. The vis­i­tors had a joint ticket for Knos­sos and the museum. I had to pay €4. The dis­plays con­tain the best of the finds from around the island, includ­ing the ‘Phais­tos Disc’. Some of the fres­coes are also on show, regret­tably not my favourite, the Blue Dol­phins’, that have become a sym­bol of Crete.

 Our next stop was to be The Dik­teon Cave where Zeus was born, high up on the Las­sithi plateau, where there not any wind­mills any­more, even though some of the guide­books still insist in print­ing a pho­to­graph of them.

 Head­ing East back along the New Road we took the turn­ing for Las­sithi and headed into the hills towards Potamies, pass­ing on the way the earth­works for the new resevoir, although there is still some doubt about how much water it is going to col­lect. I do hope that they take the oppor­tu­nity to utlilise it as a tourist attrac­tion either for bird­watch­ers or for sail­ing or per­haps both!

 I pre­fer this route on to the plateau as the road twists and turns as it climbs ever higher and unnerves the pas­sen­gers no end as if they look to the right there is often a sheer drop! Stop­ping at Kera for lunch turned out to be a mis­take for us, but a bonus for the restau­rant as shortly after we sat down two more bus­loads stopped as well. The nor­mal stop for lunch at Kera is the Monastery but we tried a small fam­ily run place called Ilias, on the road­side, very pass­able it was too!

 As we com­pleted the final ascent I stopped where the road passes through a cut­ting as there is a park­ing place which makes a good photo stop, as you can look back across the vil­lages you have just passed through and see right out to sea. Unfor­tu­nately a rein­forc­ing steel fence has been erected along the crash bar­rier so the view is a bit spoilt. Either side of the cut­ting is a row of ruined stone wind­mills stand­ing like sen­tinels, these must have looked quite impres­sive when they had their white sails still attached, but of course in this mod­ern era we use elec­tric­ity instead of wind power, so we have those char­ac­ter­less wind tur­bines every­where. How nice it would be if they could re-use those old stone mills for the same purpose!

 After all that climb­ing it often sur­prises vis­i­tors as you pass through the cut­ting and there, before you lies the plateau, which you then have to drive DOWN to! As we hit the plateau we took the turn­ing to the right and passed through a few small vil­lages such as Metochi (where you can get, I am told, a very good meze lunch) and it did not take long to get to Psichro and the Dik­teon Cave just out­side the vil­lage and up the hill. There is a large car park and a cou­ple of cafes as this site does get a bit busy, so I sat with a Greek cof­fee while the vis­i­tors climbed up to the cave, return­ing shortly after­wards because it closes at 3pm! Hence the mis­take referred to ear­lier, we should have gone straight to the cave and had a late lunch! More recent vis­i­tors have told me the cave is still clos­ing at 3pm, and it would be help­ful if they put a sign up at the bot­tom of the hill before the climb up to cave.

 Not deterred we con­tin­ued our trip around the plateau and descend­ing at the east­ern end by a wind­ing, twist­ing road we rejoined the National Road near Neapoli and then back to Elounda.

 My sec­ond day as impromptu tour guide started early again as I always feel it is nice to take a leisurely drive and see the scenery.

 The route for today was to Kritsa to the Church of Pana­gia Kera, famed for its rich dec­o­ra­tions, a short trip to the ancient hill vil­lage of Lato, the archae­o­log­i­cal site at Gour­nia and then on to Ier­ape­tra, in time for lunch naturally!

Kritsa is only a short trip from Agios Niko­laos (I resisted the temp­ta­tion to stop at Lidl on the way past) and the church of Our Lady of Kera has many Byzan­tine fres­coes, I think this was pos­si­bly the model for the church used for ‘The Moon Spin­ners’ as I don’t think the church itself was used as the film set. The vis­i­tors did not spend long inside and although I have never been inside I left my own visit for a future time!

 By this time it as time for morn­ing cof­fee, which we took in Kritsa a vil­lage pop­u­lated by many res­i­dent for­eign­ers. The place is pleas­ant enough with an abun­dance of cafes and tourist shops but of course at this time of year it was only just open­ing up so there was quite a wait for the cof­fee while they found the cups they put away last year I guess!

 On the way back to Agios we diverted to the site at Lato, unfor­tu­nately it was closed, how­ever some intre­pid French tourists, hav­ing taken the trou­ble to drive there, had climbed over the fence to have a look any­way. My guests didn’t like this idea so we car­ried on back to the main road, head­ing for Ier­ape­tra. This is actu­ally the road to Sitia, which I have men­tioned to you before so I will not go into too much detail, suf­fice it to say that on the pre­vi­ous trip I passed the site at Gour­nia. This time I stopped but sat in the car with a cross­word while the vis­i­tors did the archae­ol­ogy. I did find some­thing else of inter­est though, some of our native orchids in full bloom!

 From here it is not a long run to Ier­ape­tra, which is the main com­mer­cial town in the area, is sur­rounded by agri­cul­ture areas and green­houses, and is the most southerly town in Europe. The town itself seems to be more of a city than Her­ak­lion but with more traf­fic lights that seem to take for­ever to change! On the plus side there is a nice local museum, a Venet­ian fortress, and a small port with fish­ing boats, this is also the place where the ferry leaves for Chrissi Island. As is usual here the beach front has many places to eat with ‘tents’ actu­ally on the beach a few feet from the water, then a road, and then the build­ings hous­ing the kitchens etc. I didn’t make a note of the name but we got an excel­lent meze lunch for four includ­ing the drinks for under €50!

 Now you know me, always ready for a trip into the unknown, and one of the vis­i­tors had expressed a desire to visit a nearby vil­lage called Agios Ioan­nis, about 20km away to the east of Ier­ape­tra. The pur­pose of the visit was to check on a house belong­ing to one of his friends in Eng­land, just to make sure it was all secure and so on. This turned out to be quite an inter­est­ing lit­tle excur­sion as after leav­ing the main coastal road we took a small wind­ing road which climbed steeply into the hills and high above cling­ing to the side of the moun­tain we could see occa­sional glimpses of the vil­lage, which if it had been any higher up would have been on top of the moun­tain, and as it was, was nearly in the clouds.

 As we left the car on the out­skirts of the vil­lage, the only sounds to be heard were the gen­tle sigh­ing of the wind and spring water rush­ing on its way down the pre­cip­i­tous moun­tain (prob­a­bly why the vil­lage was located here as run­ning water is rare on Crete). We stopped to admire the view down the val­ley and out across the Libyan Sea.

 Enter­ing the vil­lage we became aware that all was not as it should be and as we walked the nar­row hilly streets the atmos­phere became quite eerie as we realised the place was deserted and that what from a dis­tance appeared to be a typ­i­cal Cre­tan hill vil­lage, was, in the main, ruins.

 So used we are to the con­stant hum of human­ity that the absence of noise seemed absolute and yet some­how our pass­ing by the open doors and blind win­dows gave new life to the sur­round­ings and in the echoes of our sub­dued con­ver­sa­tion per­haps we could imag­ine that we could hear the laugh­ter of chil­dren, the wail­ing of the frac­tious baby, the rapid click of the dice and coun­ters as the men played tavli in the golden evening light, the rat­tle of dishes, the trilling of caged canaries, and some­where close by, the sob­bing of the bereaved widow.

 It is enough to say that we found the house we were look­ing for, and walk­ing fur­ther found that some of the larger prop­er­ties, orig­i­nally homes to the more wealthy, have been restored and are used as hol­i­day homes, many of them by Ital­ians who per­haps find sim­i­lar­i­ties with their own hill vil­lages. As far as we could work out the only inhab­i­tants seemed to be a cou­ple who ran the kafe­nion, and the only activ­ity we saw was in the church­yard as a grave was being pre­pared to receive another son or daugh­ter of the vil­lage, long absent per­haps, but finally return­ing home.

 For my part I felt a lit­tle sub­dued on the way back to Ier­ape­tra, and the con­ver­sa­tion cer­tainly didn’t sparkle as you would expect it to with four gay men in the car! Very ‘Eng­lishly’ the vis­i­tors decided it was time for after­noon tea and cakes which lifted the slight depres­sion that I think we all felt.

 While down this way I had hoped to take the vis­i­tors to the memo­r­ial to the Cre­tan Mas­sacre and then inland through the moun­tains pass­ing one of the few large bod­ies of water on Crete, time was against us though and so we headed back to base the way we had come, so there are two more things left to do another day!

 Sorry to say this is almost cer­tainly going to be the last of the monthly trav­el­ogues as I will be too busy from now on, but I will write next month and answer some more of your seem­ingly inter­minable ques­tions and explain the dif­fer­ence between ouzeries, kafe­nions, meze houses, and estiatorios!

 As usual I have given some links with pic­tures and a bit more infor­ma­tion for you. 

Some pho­tographs can be found here http://www.villaralfa.com/ierap.html

And a gay blog on Crete is here http://gaycretegreece.blogspot.com/

Yours as ever,

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