Caitlin and I arrived in Chania, one of the major cities on the Greek island of Crete, late in the evening. Crete is a huge island and is the largest and one of the southernmost islands of Greece. The next morning we woke up to see how beautiful Crete really is. Chania is backed by the huge snowy peaks of the White Mountains (yes, it is possible to ski on Crete), and its coastline is lined with sandy beaches and beautifully translucent water with a vivid turquoise color caused by the weathering and dissolving of limestone over the past centuries. Soon after we started eating our breakfast, a Portuguese guy, Luis, approached us and asked if we’d like to join him and a Dutch guy, David, to go to a nearby beach that the hostel owner recommended. The hostel owner, Angelica, arranged for us to get a super cheap rental car because she is awesome and if you ever go to Chania you should stay at Chania Hostel. I was elected as the driver and got in the car to face my first challenge: sharing the road with crazy Greek drivers while driving a manual in steep terrain (which I had no prior experience with). After about an hour of driving which included 3 or 4 wrong turns and several stalls, we made it to Seitan Beach. This one takes the cake for the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.
Possibly the most beautiful beach in the world

 

The crew. From left: Me, Caitlin, Luis, and David

 

Mandatory twins at the beach photo

 

We found a great ~25 foot cliff to jump from
And a great cliff for backflips

 

     That evening we went to dinner with a big group of people from our hostel and had our first taste of Cretan food. Greek food on the mainland was pretty good, but Cretan food just blows it away by comparison. Every bite was an explosion of flavor in my taste buds and the textures and smells and appearance all worked together to create an amazing sensory eating experience. This would soon become a common theme in our dinners. Each meal ended with the waiters bringing out a small desert and bottle of raki along with the check. Raki is Greece’s staple liquor, and is made from grapes and served after meals. Technically you’re supposed to sip on it after a meal, but anybody in their right mind just takes it as a shot because it’s not a very pleasant taste. Usually when we finished one bottle and were just about to get up to leave, the waiters would bring another bottle and convince us to take more shots. This happened 3 times per meal on average, ensuring that nobody left the restaurant sober.

The next day was rainy and gray but we still had the car rented so Caitlin, Luis, and I recruited a Russian and a Ukrainian girl to fill up the car and go on an adventure. We drove to Imbros Gorge, a canyon somewhere south of Chania. It was a nice hike but the weather was a bit of a bummer and I didn’t get any photos since there was not much to see other than gray clouds. That adventure ended with some drinking games back at the hostel where Caitlin and I taught all the Europeans the classic American game “thumper”. The next morning the weather was still pretty bad so we decided to go to another part of the island in search of sun. We got on a bus to Plakias and stayed at one of the best hostels I’ve ever been to. The hostel had a big common area inside and outside, tons of hammocks, tons of information about nearby hikes, and just a great vibe. The owner was a German guy who cooked us eggs for breakfast every morning and he also had a fridge of beer which we could take at any time and write down our name to pay for them later on the honor system. I love places with that easygoing attitude and trust in everyone, and I find that the travelers attracted to those places are the best people to hang out with.

Beautiful Plakias
                       The next day in Plakias was a beautifully clear day but possibly the windiest weather that I’ve ever experienced. Caitlin, me, and several others walked down to a nice beach and hung out there for a while and then Mark, Timo, and I continued onward, scrambling up the rocks to find the best viewpoint. Mark is a really smart and inspiring California guy who I found out had worked with my Pomona geology professor in a lab at Princeton (random connections like this keep happening everywhere!). He found his passion in exploring the mountains and has been leading hiking tours and teaching skiing all over the world for the last few years. Timo is a really cool and open minded guy from Berlin who had visited Plakias before and liked it so much that he came back. They were both great guys to go explore with and we braved the wind to see more of the coastline. At one point it got so windy that we were leaning forward at what felt like a 45 degree angle and still being held up by the wind, and jumping straight up in the air sent us backwards about 15 feet. When looking out at the raging waves of the Libyan Sea and the clouds of water being sent a hundred feet into the air, it was easy to imagine how the ancient Greeks believed in the gods of water and wind. Poseidon definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day. When we finally made it back through the hurricane-force winds to the shelter of the hostel, the night began to fall and we were treated to a mind-boggling view of the glorious starry blue streak across the night sky that is the Milky Way.

From left: Abdul, Mark, Timo, me, Beck, Caitlin, and a dude whose name I don’t remember

 

The amazing mountains of Southern Crete

 

Invert your body and invert your mind

 

The amazing coastline of Southern Crete
 
The next day was unfortunately our last day in our way-too-short trip to Crete, so Caitlin and I took a bus to Rethymno and then onward to the Heraklion airport. We walked around Rethymno for a couple hours and found a fortress on a hill which had a great view over the city and coastline. When we got to the airport there were tons of people crowding the entrance hall, including a large marching band and a huge group of monks. The next day was Orthodox Easter and a monk was bringing a holy candle from Jerusalem on a flight which was about to land. We watched as the monks came out into the arrivals hall and hundreds of people lit their own candles from the monk’s holy candle, all the while chanting prayers in Greek. Apparently they have a huge Easter celebration when the clock strikes midnight, with tons of fireworks an every church has a huge bonfire, but our flight left at 11pm so we missed it. We were able to see fireworks an bonfires in Cyprus from the air though as the plane descended for landing.

The fortress in Rethymno

 

Greek Orthodox monks

 

The holy fire from Jerusalem
 
    I left Crete with the feeling that I’ll definitely be back in the future; there’s just too much more to explore to resist going back again. Our flight was to Tel Aviv but had a 24 hour layover in Larnaca, Cyprus on the way. In Cyprus we had arranged to couchsurf with Rony, a kitesurfing teacher and generally awesome person. Rony picked us up from the airport and took us to a bakery where we got a bunch of Cypriot pastries and then went to his house to meet his 6 dogs. I soon found out that Cypriot food is as good as, or possibly even better than, Cretan food. In the morning Rony cooked us an amazing Easter brunch which included smoothies, pan-fried halloumi cheese, a bunch of vegetables, hummus, pita, Cypriot yogurt (similar to Greek yogurt) with dill and olive oil, a baklava-like desert, and probably a lot more that I’m forgetting right now.

After a delicious and incredibly filling brunch we set off to the beach that Rony kitesurfs at, near Limassol. We couldn’t kitesurf because it requires a couple hours of training on how to fly the kite before it’s even possible to get on a board, but Rony let me put on a harness and fly the kite for a bit so I could feel how incredibly powerful and difficult to control it is. There is a bar that you hold on to and pull left or right to lower the kite to each side, and you can pull down to increase the power. It was amazing how I would lift off the ground when I pulled down on the bar. Seeing Rony kitesurf and trying to control the kite myself made me really want to spend some time kitesurfing so I could get good at it. It looks like the ultimate adrenaline rush, like a combination of wakeboarding and flying. As I continue to travel I’ll definitely be on the lookout for a kitesurf shop that is willing to offer me free lessons and a place to sleep in exchange for a couple weeks of work.

Learning how to fly the kite

 

About to launch

 

Cypriot sunset

 

After the beach we went into Limassol and I got the greatest thing ever: a gyro containing chicken, bacon, and halloumi, smothered in tahini. It was an amazing goodbye food from Cyprus, and soon after we were boarding the airplane headed to the homeland. I was about to start my first hostel job in central Tel Aviv, which would soon become one of my favorite cities in the world, tied for #1 with Vancouver and Ljubljana. More about that coming soon.