Paleochora AcquaGym in Chora Sfakion

It’s approaching the time when I am to be ejected from my nice studio. It’s the Greek holiday week ending with the feast of the Assumption and the booking for my studio was made a long time before I turned up.

My first week of ejection in July ended with a week on Gavdos. This was definitely a good use of that week and Manto made all the arrangements for me. For this second week, surely I must find somewhere myself.

Try as I might, I have failed to find anywhere during this holiday week. Just as I am about to give up and resign myself to sleeping on the beach, I come across the Resort Hotel Soprender advertising “Sueño ejerciciosagua” in Chora Sfakion, much to my surprise. So I immediately email the place and receive a cheery response from ‘Dasha’. I later discover that this is a lovely lady. They have vacancies. There’s no need to send a deposit. “None of our guests has ever let us done .. “ and so on. I am astonished and relieved.

Chora Sfakion is extremely easy to reach from Paleohora on a Friday. The Samaria goes there before setting out for Gavdos. So I turn up at 0830 and enjoy a very pleasant trip along the coast. Our stop at Loutro is a surprise as there are far too many people there!! Wall to wall, they were. And this was one of the places in which I had tried to book a hotel!! You have to breathe out to fit on the tiny beach.

The hotel has a couple of buses but Dasha had told me that the bus service did not meet that boat. I look around and ask a knowledgeable looking person how I can get to the hotel. “Oh Easy!!! It’s just ten minutes walk up the road!”

I sigh and set off up the Chania road; not the sort of thing you want to do on a hot day. The road goes up and up and up …. After about twenty minutes I come to a police station. A friendly face sees me and motions me to come inside and rest. Greek policemen are so nice!!! When I tell them my objective, they say, “It’s only 500 metres up the road. I apply my Greek to English multiplier and reckon it must be about two kilometres, which is good because it turns out to be slightly less.

I struggle through the door of the Resort Hotel Soprender and there is the beautiful lady Dasha who seems to run the hotel. She is astounded to learn that I have walked all the way – so am I!! She hands me an incredibly long ethernet cable which must reach almost from my room to reception. “It doesn’t work with some computers” but I am sure it works for mine as I have the very latest Toshiba Centrino 2, 4 Gb laptop which I bought VAT free in March.

Every day another lovely lady called Irene conducts an induction ceremony where we are made to drink shots of ouzo or raki. If, like me, you chicken out, you are made to drink litres of Brazilian orange juice. So we learn about all the trips and services offered by the hotel. For example the boat trip to Gavdos is oversubscribed by 20 and has never been known to go in living memory – or at least in the memory of any living people I spoke to. You can slide down gorges or take a stately trip to beaches in the vicinity. Of course, this is the trip I choose!!

The only experience I have ever had of a place like this was when I worked at Butlins as a blue coat. I would stand in the dining hall and porters would bring the meals out to me. After I had extracted the best pieces of caviare, I would hand the stuff to the waitresses. And I was paid for that!! As the waitresses were selling their bodies on the side, they received huge tips which they shared with me!!! How good is that!!!

After we have been ‘inducted’ I feel a touch of Lenz’s law coming on but I struggle along with the others down to dinner.

Dinner is taken on a balcony which would have the most beautiful view in the world were it not for the fact that trees grow directly in front, obscuring this wonderful view. Extremely courteous but nice people seat us as best they can. There is a huge buffet with about sixteen dishes. The mains have pictures of cows, chickens and pigs to help you tell what is in the dishes. They always have nice desserts plus large chunks of fruit salad. Now and then, they have Greek specialities. I love their pies (I always like pies!!) and the stuffed tomatoes. They also cook “immam” as I do at home.

Now the question is how do you handle the seating situation when you are a single person. I just hate sitting on my own: the bane of the solo traveller. So when the seating person directs me to a small table, I immediately rebel and ‘pounce’ on a couple at another larger table who are smiling. “Do you mind if I join you?”, I say sweetly and they glance up at me thinking “who the hell is this?”. (Actually if they ever did this, I’m sure I would have moved on to the next smiling couple.) In fact I was welcomed and treated extremely well by each couple I ‘pounced’ on. One feature which did put me off was the fact that polite Germans will not start eating their small plates of food until I arrive back with my huge plate of food.

But then my rebellion becomes more extreme as the week goes on. I get fed up with ‘pouncing’ so I go and sit on a large table all on my own. This was not appreciated by the seating person. But I am joined by Irene, our activities director, the first night then one of my ‘pounced’ couples join me on the second night. So I make appropriate guestures to the seating person on succeeding nights as the table becomes regularly full so that I have no need to ‘pounce’ any more. But I must point out that the people in this particular place were the nicest group I have ever run across.

Thirty four years ago, I spent almost two months living on a beach near Chora Sfakion called Sweetwater Beach. It has that name because, if you dig a hole in the ground, beautful drinking water will fill the hole as it drains from the mountains above. We normally dug two holes, the second for the evening bath after swimming in the sea all day. My vision of the clients in the hotel was of aging hippies who simply couldn’t do the beach thing any more.

In fact they are a very varied bunch of people. One chap is working for the US State Department in Northern Irak with Kurds who keep killing each other for some reason. I have no idea how his wife can put up with this. She agrees with all my caveats! Another couple, both born in Israel, assure me that it is very peaceful in their homeland. Another couple, who love dancing, run some sort of mental wellness clinic in Frankfurt. Another builds windmills in Denmark. Another distributes satcom equipment. The list of people who have discovered South Crete without coming here as ‘hippies’ is endless.

I’m used to swimming in the sea from Paleohora sandy beach so I just love the incredibly warm pool. It reminds of the warm water of Queensland. On my first morning, I am just slowly entering the pool after not having enough coffee (come on – I did walk up the hill with a full pack yesterday!!) when a bright voice says, “Oh good, you’re joining acquaGym!!!”

AcquaGym? She MUST be kidding!! But I really go for anything wierd like this so I join in doing all sorts of barre exercises in the water and then knees ups across the pool. Finally we do things like those funny synchronised swimmers do in the Olympics. It’s crazy!! I like it!!!

I sign up for the beach boat trip. This leaves from Chora Sfakion harbour and visits a number of beaches which can not be reached by land. It’s a fairly slow boat but there’s a free bar – a huge chest filled with beer, Greek spirits and soft drink. This is definitely off limits for me as I am scuppered with even a little alcohol.

The first beach is beautiful. The boat backs up to the beach to enable us to push off and reach the shore very easily. There’s a cave which has two levels as a hard layer has remained after the layer beneath has been washed away. It’s heaven – something you only dream about or see in Lonely Planet films at lunchtime in Australia.

The second beach has a few campers on it, a little church full of icons, and a taverna at the end. Tavernas seem to pop up everywhere in Crete; even as here, where you need a boat to get there.

We then make a stop for a magnificent Cretan lunch. The food starts coming and doesn’t stop!! But it is the range of pies which really gets me. Best of all is the large thick spinach pie with the cheese and herb pie (including Crete mint which is supposed to be different from the British mint) coming a good second. Many of the people on the trip cannot finish the meal so I help them out. We conclude the meal with shots of raki which causes our tour guide to collapse in a heap. (We later discover that she’s having us on!)

Our final beach is Sweetwater Beach which has a heap of emotional attachment for me. It’s probably one of my reasons for coming to the hotel. I swim up and down the beach remembering the wonderful time I had all those years ago. Unfortunately, the character of the beach has changed as water taxis ply back and forth with their tourists. There are a few campers but I fancy most have moved to places like Gavdos for a more amenable atmosphere.

Back on the boat, I drink to a lovely memory with a tin of Mythos. It is remarkable that there is a lot of beer left in the drinks chest. That would never happen in Australia!!!!

The next trip I take is to a huge gorge but not the famous Samaria Gorge. The hotel shuttle takes us to the top via an incredibly spectacular road going out of Chora Sfakion. We reach the Aradena Gorge by walking down a very steep path after crossing a very loud steel bridge.

I didn’t figure on doing any rock scrambling so once again, as on Gavdos, I have left my mountaineering boots in Paleochora. So I am slithering around on the dusty rocks in the gorge in my almost useless Rockports. It destroys some of the fun and exhilaration of the trip. Then our leader sprains her ankle, badly it seems. Luckily there is a goat water trough to cool the ankle. She’s a “real trooper”, as we say in England, so we are hardly held up as she hobbles down the final part of the gorge. Inevitably there is a taverna on top of an enormous boulder by the sea and the barman supplies a load of ice for the ankle. We return to Sfakia by boat.

During my stay, I have run across a very interesting and ever so slightly crazy chap. I will call him Nev, because of his incredibly high political position in England. He is a classics expert and wants to visit a Greek and Roman site called Gortis and asks if I would like to come with him. I naturally accept although, like him; I think it’s a long way to go for a slightly unspectacular ruin.

The journey is a delight! The views are wonderful and the conversation is extremely stimulating. It takes us three and a half hours to get there but the terrain makes up for the length of time. The ruin is interesting but not much is preserved or cleared. I fear they need a few “Time Team” visits to see if there is anything the locals have not taken away to build their villages.

On the way back we stop at a village for a late lunch of yet another type of spinach pie. This is the type where a lot of spinach and cheese is rolled up in pastry then formed into a circular shape like an Italian or Cumberland sausage. This has a very strong spinach flavour with less cheese than normal. As usual it was delicious!! I’ve even seen a large version of this type of pie in the freezer cabinet of a local supermarket in Paleohora.

It was sad to leave. Our bandaged activities leader even gives me some hugs before I leave. The bus, which doesn’t take people to the boat either, runs me down to the harbour where I wait for one and a half hours for the boat. To pass the time, I walk to a taverna and order a freshly squeezed orange juice. Delicious but twice what I pay in Paleochora!!! Then I notice “Sfakia Pie” on the menu. I have to try it of course!!!!

This Sfakia Pie is a cheese pie which you eat with honey!!! The soft cheese they use is not very savoury but with honey it becomes rather sickly. I ask the waitress to hold the pie and take a photograph, thinking that she is probably more attractive than the pie!!

At last the local ferry arrives and I reach the end of the Samarian Gorge where I will catch the Samaria on its journey back from Gavdos to Paleohora. I spot a nice taverna opposite the landing stage with very reasonable prices. I ask if they freeze their glasses and the bar person says, “Only the large tankards”. So I say, “I’d better have a large one then!”.

So I nurse a huge German tankard full of draught Greek beer for three hours. It is delicious and cold!!

Finally the Samaria arrives and everyone rushes on board so they can sit there for half an hour while the ship waits for the deparrture time of 1730. I am sitting next to a nice German lady who has just walked, with her two children aged seven and eight, down the Samarian Gorge; a distance of sixteen kilometres. The kids are jumping around the place as though they haven’t been anywhere. I give my Pringles to the kids with pleasure as this means I won’t eat them. They are here without their Dad as he doesn’t like the heat. Nice kids! Nice Mum! “I’m a walker!!!” she says assertively.

As we round the ‘crocodile’ headland, after an incredibly smooth ride, a strong wind comes up and blows spume in our faces even though the waves are still small. Welcome back to Paleohora and its winds!!!

Once again I am welcomed by Manto. She gives me two litres of olive oil and one litre of raki. “I bring two more litres of raki tomorrow”. When I protest, she says, “We drink raki tomorrow!!”