A Week on Crete (2)

We woke in our villa first morning to almost perfect peace and quiet. I opened the curtains to the superb view into the valley backed by mountains and made Lib a cup of tea. There was no activity outside and besides a few bird calls and the movement of a curious cat now and again it was like everything had stopped. We had booked breakfast but Georgina had said don't come up too early so it was about 9am when we sauntered to the reception/dining area.

A view from our villa 

Emmanuel told us to sit wherever we liked so we chose outside in the shade of a sail overlooking the swimming pool. Georgina told us different lady would get our breakfast, she was named Georgina also, but this one who was red haired and round and smiling, spoke almost no English; not that it mattered, she brought us an amazing feast that included everything you could think you might like for breakfast expertly presented. We were the only patrons and there was enough food on our table for ten people to be well fed.

We asked Georgina, with some difficulty to make her understand, if there was somewhere we could do our laundry as we had a bit of a build up. She took us down to the end of the row of villas to a laundry room and put all our washing in one front loader which required coins to operate. I didn't have enough the Euro coins needed, and neither did Georgina. She found a man working in the garden, his name was George, and I exchanged money with him to make the machine work. As it turned out the machine got stuck in its cycle, I think it was overloaded, but it wet them and splashed them around. When Lib went back she said it seemed to be stuck so she finished it off and rinsed them by hand and she found a clothes line in front of another villa as ours didn't have one.

We were itching to drive out into the island and explore and did so a bit before midday. We planned to go to Retimo which was one of the four major cities along the north coast of Crete, which is about 220km long east to west and 40-60km wide north to south. The south coast is steep and mountainous with steep cliffs for the most part so the main population centres and airport are along the north coast which has spectacular scenery too but also long stretches of beaches and flat plain and tourist development. The National Highway links the four cities and carries a surprisingly heavy load of traffic.

During WW2 Retimo was defended by the Australians, Maleme and nearby Chania by the New Zealanders, Heraklion by the Brits and Agios Nikolaus by members of the Greek National army. There were about 40,000 soldiers combined in the defence force under the command of NZ General Freyberg who had won a VC in WW1.

I was keen to have a look at Retimo and Georgiopoulos where my late mate Doug Twaits would have been with the 2/7th AIF battalion. Leaving Estate Kares and heading back to the Highway we came across an intersection which we had passed through the previous evening selecting the Tyllisos road, this time the sign said Rethymnos to the left. I think Rethymnos is the Greek and Retimos is English. We took this turn not realizing it was the high road that went through the mountains. It was twisty and narrow, steep with huge cliffs here and there, and for the most part going through villages and scenery that I don't think would have changed in decades.

We had not gone far up into the mountains along the narrowing road when a storm hit. Strong wind and heavy rain did not make the driving easy. Even the goats were sheltering along the road in depressions in the rock wall. I thought these were wild goats but as the week went by and we saw many goats all over the foothills and mountains I believed them to be domestic goat herds that wandered wherever. There was often one or two in the group that had a bell around its neck, indicating that someone went looking for them now and again.On this drive there was storm damage- tree litter and refuse spread about the villages.

Goats sheltering the storm

Our two objectives for the day besides familiarizing ourselves with our topography were to find somewhere to  buy supplies for our evening meals and somewhere nice to have lunch.This was not easy on the route we had chosen as there was nothing much but a few villages where the streets were narrow and there didn't seem to be anywhere to park the car. We passed a few tavernas where a good meal would probably have been available but we were past them before we knew it with no obvious place to pull over.Later as I gained more confidence with the driving this was less a problem. We kept following the road and took the odd fork we hoped was right. We got a bit bushed but knew that if we kept going we'd eventually come back to the Highway as it had to be to the north. We reached the highway a little short of Retimo and found a supermarket, more a small tourist market, but we did buy bread wine tomatoes cucumber tinned sardines and such.

We took a turn off toward the beach and found a fairly isolated area. There were demolished buildings that had not been cleaned up and much litter, which was the case all over the place in the populated areas, and a lot of unfinished or half built houses and empty old ones in disrepair. We thought this must be the result of the GFC and the ongoing Greek economic crisis which had been so well publicized. Crete was generally not a tidy place we had discovered, probably the rugged terrain and the political turmoil and the laid back nature of the people all combined to make this so. Most people smoked cigarettes, motor bike riders didn't bother with helmets and sped past you on the highway. They parked cars anywhere, crossed double lines as if they weren't there, and rarely used indicators. They'd pass you at great speed and at close quarters to you. There was a gungho fatalistic approach that took a bit of getting used to. The first day out on the road was not that relaxed for me.

We manged to find a supermarket that sold meat, Lib was after fishthat wasn't there and bought pork chops instead. We traveled back to our Estate on the national highway and found our turn off more easily now that we half had a handle on our whereabouts. It was about 6pm when we got back. We told Georgina 1 that we didn't require dinner- she seemed disappointed- but we asked her to tell Georgina (2) that we'd like breakfast again. Georgie asked about our day and we told her we had trouble finding shops eg butcher and market place. She told us that in Gazi 15 minutes away a little out of Heraklion where she lived there was a big supermarket that has everything and was easy. We sat enjoying cold beer and playing with facebook on our phones on the patio /viewing platform that was outside our villa. I loved the quiet, and watching the hawks and eagles. I rang Gord. He told us all was well at home. My beer was non alcoholic and I skipped the wine that night (and the next). Our meal was good and we crashed early.