Gavdos Rolling there and Bouncing Back

Leaving Paleochora isn’t too bad. I’m coming back at the end of the week anyway. Manto has rung George Papadakis in Gavdos and arranged a four day stay for me in the “Princess Apartments”, really a series of small villas, which have 24 hour electricity and, after all our problems with wireless internet, satellite Wi-Fi. The owner will meet me on the quay in Gavdos.

The ferry leaves its mooring and positions itself at an angle to Paleohora quay so that everyone can walk up the ramp on to the deck. Then come pallets of supplies and the cars. The wind has been howling for the last few days so the ferry has to take all the stuff which failed to go previously because of the weather. The ferry cannot reach Gavdos when the wind is up.

We leave a little after the scheduled time and soon reach the little landing stage at Sougia. Not much to load here and I cannot imagine why people have their cars here. The Irini Gorge ends in Sougia so I may be back at some time in the future.

The scenery is wonderful!! Most of the coast is sheer cliff face and I can see clouds around the mountain tops. The water is a curious light colour by the cliff face, unlike the normal clear cobalt blue of the deep water. We travel along the coast very near to the cliffs and occasionally pass tiny beaches as the water is very deep here.

We soon reach the end of the Samaria Gorge. We can see the end of this spectacular natural wonder. On the quay are crowds of people who must have been waiting for days. The ferry loaders find that there is not enough room for all the supplies and cars so they begin to move things around to fit everything in. The supplies are restacked on top of the utes and luggage racks and somehow all the waiting motorbikes and cars are on board

At last the ferry backs away and heads for Gavdos full steam ahead. I am joined by Beatrice, a schoolteacher from Genova who, I suspect, has found that we are the only two passengers over the age of 40, let alone fifty. She is masters Italian Long Distance Swimming Champion of Italy(ten kilometres in the sea). Just listening to her daily routine exhausts me so I cannot imagine how she manages to teach at the tough school where she works.

Slowly, as the journey goes on, Beatrice’s face turns a little yellow after which it exhibits a slight tinge of green. Then she rushes off to the heads. When she returns, she explains, “It’s the Moussaka I had last night. Just one hour and twenty minutes to go!!”

For Beatrice, it is a long one hour twenty minutes. The ferry rolls continuously from side to side as the wind comes side on. A little water washes into the overloaded car deck but it seems safe to continue but not very comfortable. Beatrice explains a few things about the island, “I like it because there’s nothing there!” Of course, for her, there is sea enough for her three kilometre swim before breakfast! As we approach the island, she points out the beach where she and her husband swim each day.

At last we round the headland and enter the harbour. Beatrice regains her colour as she sees her husband on the quay. He is retired and has been here for three months. He is the type of Italian who wears his heart on his sleeve. I warm to him within a few seconds!!! He is more crazy than me!!! We agree to have dinner on Tuesday, the next day. The person, who has come to collect me, agrees to transport them up the place where I am staying if they ring just before dinner.

There are not many roads on Gavdos. Some people might say there are no roads on Gavdos! As you seldom meet other cars, this doesn’t really matter. I am staying in the Princess Apartments in Kastri, the highest settlement on the island. When we arrive I am stunned by the amazing view. I can see from and realise how mountainous the south coast of Crete really is.

I am welcomed by the owner George, who has supervised the building of the little houses which he modestly describes as “apartments”. They are built by local builders from Georgia in dry stone half a metre thick. They are constructed of huge rocks and filled in with smaller rocks. The inside is then plastered to make a very thick highly insulated wall. Each little house has a walk-in shower in the bathroom and a separate bedroom plus a small kitchen. The attraction for me is the satellite internet which works OK if I orientate my laptop correctly. I am amazed when he says that he is going to set the air conditioning at sixteen degrees. I tell him to put it at twenty six as I come from Queensland and I have aclimatised myself to the daily thirty three degree temperatures in Paleochora. George explains that he hates the heat and would ideally like to live in Iceland or anywhere above the Arctic Circle. But he loves Gavdos too much to leave.

Immediately after my arrival, George convinces me that we must drink beer together. George treats his clients as friends for whom he will do anything to please. I manage to get away with half a bottle but he says, “We drink two tonight!”

Wherever you stay in Greece, there’s always something that doesn’t work. In the Aris, the loo didn’t flush properly. In Manto’s, it was the Wi-Fi. Here it is the satellite television which works perfectly in the dining area but not in my house. This does not worry me at all because I can live on for another week without hearing news about finance and disasters.

I have only four days so, after a morning spent rolling from side to side on the sea, I set off to a nice beach six kilometres away. It’s all downhill but the going is rough. I realise that I should have brought my mountain boots for this rough terrain. My Flolarados don’t give me much help on the rocky track I am following. There are no signs but I can see the sea and a magnificent vista of the mountains of Crete which make the going worthwhile. I make a few wrong turns to isolated farms and one to the heliport but I eventually turn sharp right on to the track which descends into the deep gorge leading to the sea. As I near the sea, I stop at a “closed” taverna where, as usual, the owner supplies me with water.

Eventually I spot another taverna and a cantina just below. The cantina is on the edge of a gorge which is small but steep sided. I follow a couple of people from the cantina down one side of the gorge and up the other side to a sign which gives the usual “camper” (OK “hippie” if you like!) exhortation and welcome. In short it says the usual things like not harming any trees and leaving the environment as you find it. There are bins for rubbish just by the cantina and I notice a rank of sockets where “hippies” are charging up their iPhones.

I carry on walking westward firstly over razor sharp rocks then over sand hills. The sand hills remind me of “Wayne’s World” where Wayne follows the indian up the sand hills to meet Jim Morrison. But here, when I go over the top of the sand hills, I spy about five Jim Morrisons complete with brown hairy maidens and two Hiawathas on the beach below. One of the Jim Morrisons tells me that National Geographic had said that this is the second best beach in the world. Another tells me it was Lonely Planet. What both of these reputable organisations didn’t say was that there are even nicer beaches west of this one but they would have needed a boat to get the camera crew there and they were probably too drunk to go any further.

One of the beauties of this beach is that the sand has the very fine texture that I love. When you sleep on this type of sand, you wriggle around a bit until the sand below you adopts your exact profile, then have the most comfortable sleep possible; better than on any mattress. I am even tempted to stay the night here but, after swimming in a sea much warmer than Paleohora, I decide that I must return to my little house complete with satellite internet, tea maker and bathroom.

There’s no way I’m going to walk back the way I came so I tag on to a Greek from Athens who decides to take the coast route back to the cantina. This is totally razor sharp rock so I do not feel guilty when I prevail on him to run me back to my little house in his car. Unhappily, he will not come in for the traditional drink but drives away after receiving my profuse thanks.

After such a hard day, I am delighted to see that George’s mother, the cook, is doing goat in a white lemon sauce for dinner. However, I insist on looking around the kitchen to see what’s brewing and cooking. I decide that goat is indeed the best choice. Meanwhile she gives me a slice of what she calls ‘Halva’, which is completely different from the halva you get anywhere else. It’s a two tone cake with piles of mixed sweet spices in the brown part. I cannot detect any tahini in it but I didn’t ask for the recipe of such a sweet thing!

The following day, I get George to run me down to the cantina, which is run by a good friend of his. of course, with such a small population, everybody is good friends with each other!! We agree a time for him to pick me up and I spend a few hours swimming and relaxing on this marvellous beach. It’s great for a terrible swimmer like me as it slopes very gradually with that fine sand underfoot and no rocks as there are in Paleohora. Because the bay is shallow, the sea is warm!!! Just my sort of place!!

I return to the cantina this time by the sand dune Jim Morrison route and discover that George has spent the last few hours drinking beer with his friend. He seems to spend all day drinking cold neat espresso and beer! Then we drive back to my little house via the coast road avoiding the rough track I had taken the day before.

After we return to the ranch, I decide that it’s now my turn to do some bonding so I get a few cans of beer, I had bought for this sort of thing in Paleochora, from my fridge and insist that George drink it. He explains that he prefers Amstell to this central European stuff and anyway, it’s all brewed in Athens. But he drinks it in the spirit in which it is given and we are both happy.

Soon after our liquid rebonding, Beatrice and Alex ring to say that they are waiting to be picked up in Consulas. We jump in the van and shoot like a rocket down the road towards them. George drives like an F1 driver after more than five beers so I know we are safe.

I had warned George than Alex was crazier than me but he gives me a strange look as he receives an incredibly exuberant welcome. But Alex’s excitement is infectious and we are all smiling by the time we return to the ranch. George’s mother is overwhelmed by Alex who cries out, “La Mama!!!” when he sees her; so much so that she keeps on repeating, “La Mama” all the following day.

We talk so much that evening that I cannot even remember much about the food we ate. I know Beatrice and I had the vegetarian dish of stuffed tomatoes, peppers and zuchini that they always have on the menu and I think Alex had the goat. We also had plates of small delicacies and spiced cheeses and ended with a dessert which I cannot even begin to describe. He was amazed that I knew so much about Italy and had visited every part many years ago.

But, later in the evening, George announces that we are all going to a concert given by the best bowed lyre player and Cretan singer in the world. We all jump into the minibus and tear down the road, F1 style, to an open air Greek theatre that I recognise as Georgian stonework. This player, whose name I cannot write here, was fantastic!!! The playing was marvellous – much better than any of his recordings made in the USA! The bowed lyre is an ancester of the English viol, played upright on the knee. In the front line with the lyre were two lute players with second lute having a much bigger body than the normal lute. Behind them were the bass and drums.

This music is so exciting. You cannot listen to it without moving various parts of your body. You can see everybody twitching in time to the music! The Greek type of theatre is designed for dancing so people flock on to the floor to do the various dances. I had no idea of how different and complex some of the Cretan dances are. Some of the dancers were very elegant and very fluid in their movement and these are left on the floor as others peel off when the tempo speeds up. Men and women dance together. They play and sing only Cretan music. But not a bar of Zorba tonight! This is Cretan music not Rebetiko!!!

Alex and Beatrice leave the concert shortly after midnight and we return to the ranch a couple of hours later. I am amazed how wonderful the performance has been and how much better they are than the recordings I had heard. George explains that the recordings were made in the USA during their tours and a Cretan (Gavdos people are Cretans in this sense) audience will natually get a more exciting performance.

The next morning, George runs me to the southernmost beach of Europe. But, on the way, we visit the island electricity power station. As a chartered electrical engineer(but not in power!), I will feel a tinge of guilt if I do not accept the offer to look around the station. The operator is so proud of it. They have about six separate diesel generators, so they can cope with any sequence of demands very easily, and another which is never used. He explains that the ranks of solar generators outside no longer work. They are the old type which do not have automatic internal correction. I feel like grabbing a meter and knocking the shorted units out of their circuits but I simply sympathise and hope they order some decent modern units next time and hire someone to maintain them regularly. But, in fairness to them, they had some extremely heavy rains in April which must have penetrated these old units.

We continue to the beach and George leaves me to walk a little way along the coast path. I start climbing the beginning of the path to the southernmost corner of land in Europe but find that the recent heavy rains have washed most of it away leaving rock slabs covered with loose pebbles. I decide that this is too dangerous to walk on my own so I climb the hill, take some photographs, then gingerly descend the slope.

On the beach I meet a man from Ticino in Switzerland. We joke about about how nice Switzerland is – “Pity about the Swiss .. ” and he agrees that Ticine is very different from German Switzerland – almost the opposite in fact!! He is a biological medical expert and declines to talk about his work until I give him some advice about Australia. He and his children are camping on the beach and they love Gavdos. His clinic treats the Sultan of Dubai and he has just given them millions of franks for research. He stresses that the money is not for them; just for the research clinic.

Later in the evening, I walk up the hill to the lighthouse to see the sunset and later to view the stars without atmospheric or light pollution. The view is incredible! A ute draws up alongside me and offers me a lift back to the ranch. They are astonished when I decline their offer and they drive off saying, “Have a nice night!!!” And I did.

The next morning I again walk the six kilometres downhill without diversion to my favourite Lonely Planet beach and encounter a Norwegian book publisher on the path. His publishing house is in Oslo and he has a house on a peninsula in the Oslo fjord. It sounds wonderful so I ask him if he likes the snow. Surprisingly I get the answer, “I hate the snow! The only snow I like is the snow far away on the South Crete mountains!!” I seem to have hit a sore spot with this question but it turns out that he has a house on the north coast of Crete and publishes books on Greece in Norwegian.

The sea is rather rough today so I take cover under a tree next to some very nice Greeks (They’re all nice actually!!) who say, “Come and and sit here next to our tent. The sand is softer!” So I eat my lunch, have a short sleep – that sand is so soft! – and a short talk with the nice tent people before making my way back to the cantina and having a freshly squeezed orange juice.

There is a spring in the gorge above the cantina which runs all year. The cantina is surrounded by showers, some walled in for more modest people, fed by the spring. Campers bring their computers and other electical devices to charge the batteries via ranks of sockets at the front by the sound equipment. Most of the campers seem to be “pretend Jim Morrisons” from Athens so the atmosphere is a mixture of Cretan and Western, especially in their choice of rather historic music. There’s a little minimarket at the side of the taverna above and the people who run the cantina and taverna seem to be willing to give any help they can to keep everybody happy

I ask the manager to call George and he appears about an hour later to buy almost everybody a beer, including me. He even buys beers for a couple of Jim Morrisons who are extremely grateful for his generosity. Knowing that George will carry me home, I slake my thirst with Amstells’ best and afterwards collapse into the car for a speedy F1 return to the ranch.

That evening we again go to collect Beatrice and Alex from Consulas. They insist on paying for dinner this evening and I give in on condition that they share a villa with me in September.

I have asked George’s mother to do her version of “Fainting of the Immam” which I cook frequently in Australia. They simply call it “Eggplant Immam” or simply “Immam” on Greek menus. I normally sweat the aubergines in slices but she simply stuffs them with the tomatos. onions, basil, grass and garlic. This way, you taste the aubergine more than in my method which I obtained from a Cypriot. “Cypriots aren’t nice Greeks!” George says, much to my surprise.

But Alex goes crazy tonight. We all start with the three different herbed cheese and yoghurt plates. Then come some baked zuchini things followed by small cheese pies. Then spinach pies. After that we all have Immam, which is delicious. To our astonishment, Alex says he wants to have goat. Asked which goat he wants – goat in red tomato sauce or goat in white lemon sauce – he says, “I’ll have both!!!” Two plates of goat arrive and he then orders a plate of chips (the English or Australian thick hand-cut type) which he dips in some Tsizakis. I also join him in this.

Somehow Alex finishes both goats, much to the horror of Beatrice. “One apple for you tomorrow!!” she says. Behind us, two people have ordered the escargo pasta lunga served up on a massive silver tray. They could only manage half of this so they hand it all to Alex who polishes that off as well. We are all amazed when he then asks for a dessert! He is told that all the special desserts have gone, but I’m not sure whether “La Mama” is not simply sympathising with Beatrice. He is so disappointed that I tell him that they might have a little halfa. And they do have some. He eats that as well!!! Just shows what swimming all those kilometres can do to you!

Later we talk to another Italian couple and I tell the woman, who comes from Palermo originally, about my experiences with the mafia family which built all the high rise buildings around Palermo. Then I remember the women from Messina smuggling salt across the Straits under their skirts. “I did that!”, the lady exclaims. And so on .. It’s really nice to talk to people who actually live in the places I have visited. Beatrice speaks French and Italian. Alex speaks Italian and some English. With my limited French and Italian, we manage to communicate pretty well.

The next day, George runs me down to the ferry harbour. But, while I am waiting to go, his mother appears and gives me a freshly cooked “grass pie”. I don’t know how they came up with this priceless bit of English translation but the word “grass” seems to indicate a number of wild greens growing around the island. I take the top off and photograph the inside of the pie for later investigation. It is SO delicious!!! I can definitely suggest that anyone visiting Gavdos eat at her place if you don’t decide to stay there. The prices are also ridiculously low. According to Alex, they are about half the price of elsewhere on the island. I show him my villa and he thinks that is also an incredible bargain.

From George’s place we can see the ferry approaching the island so we leave for the harbour as soon as it rounds the headland. I see the ‘Samaria’ coming in to the harbour! This is the ferry that lays off the Paleochora old harbour each evening so I know, whatever happens, I will end up there tonight if we don’t sink.

I notice the captain directing that all the cargo be secured at the stern leaving the foredeck clear. Once we leave and round the headland, I can see why he has done this. There are whitecaps all the way to Crete. We steer a course about thirty degrees to the oncoming sea so rolling is not an immediate problem. The light bow lifts easily over the big waves and slams down on the next with a huge shuddering of the structure of the boat. It coasts along for a bit then repeats the process sometimes falling sideways off a wave. A number of ferries like this have sunk in the last few years but I have never heard of one falling apart because of impact with an oncoming sea. So I enjoy the journey and the spectacular view of the high mountains of southern Crete as we approach Hora Sfakion.

The captain obviously wants to get back to Paleohora in time for dinner so we get underway from Hora Sfakion very quickly indeed. We bypass Loutro and make our first coast stop at the end of the Samarian Gorge where hundreds of backpackers and tourists are wondering what is going on waiting for their boat; some to Hora Sfakian and others heading towards Paleochora on our boat.

A few large groups get on the ferry but I can see many other travellers being turned away as they discover that we are not going to Hora Sfakion. They will catch the coast ferry later today or tomorrow. We leave quickly, as there are no cars to load, and soon come to Sougia (pronounced “Sue – yer”) where some buses wait for tourists returning to Chania.

All the while, we have been travelling along some of the most spectacular coastal areas in the world. The cliffs are magnificent and the mountains towering behind provide a wonderful backcloth to the scenery. The colour of the sea is strange – not really a cobalt blue and that lightened hue by the rocks is magic. I cannot imagine a more entrancing route. The sun, now setting in the West, shows the mountains in a completely different light to the view when I was on my way to Gavdos.

The boat goes close in to the shore where the sea is very calm so we see the beaches we cannot normally reach and the steepness of the cliffs between them.

Soon we approach Paleohora and the boat puts down its front ramp and we all walk off. Later the boat will back away and come alongside the harbour to tie up for the night. I walk along the shore and see that the restaurant called Calypso, the legendary nymph of Gavdos, is doing Lamb Klepsico again, so I continue to my studio where Manto greets me with a two litre bottle of Raki and promises to bring me two litres of olive oil tomorrow. How will I survive?