Rich and Cat's Travels: Crete

After having a nice couple drinks in a coffee shop near the port having safely tucked Pierre in a car park we boarded the ferry, hoping this would be better than the last one. It looked a lot nicer and there was far more space, including seats in the bar. There were also some members of staff which was an improvement on the last ferry. We quickly found what we hoped would be a quiet spot for the evening and set up shop. The ferry soon got busy but Rich said thought most families would have cabins and would disappear at some point, especially the family opposite us who had three young children. Little did we know that they would be the source of entertainment for the next couple of hours. Essentially once they got settled in their seats they quickly left the large table with just their stuff on to ‘hold’ the table. As people were still boarding the ferry people kept trying to sit there which meant that the people either side kept having to tell them the table was taken. This went on for a good 30-40 minutes before a young couple said that they were sitting there as the family hadn’t come back and they couldn’t just hold the table. About 30 minutes later the family decided to come back and were not happy to see this couple in their seats. A shouting match then ensued (in Greek) which we went something like “you can’t sit here, it’s our table” and “you can’t reserve tables and leave them for an hour”. The rest of the passengers in the area all watched and it was easy to see which side they were all on, mostly the young couple’s side. After 10 minutes of disagreement they shared the table but there was a very tense atmosphere for the next couple of hours of sailing. Eventually the couple next to us, who were also Greek and had a lot of spare room told the couple to come and share their area and then everyone settled in for the night. The family didn’t have a cabin as Rich had thought which meant that there were three young children who were all grizzly for the whole evening and as the whole bar area was busier than most of the ferries we had been on we didn’t get a full night’s sleep but we did get some sleep.

We arrived in Crete at 7am in the morning and grabbed a quick bite before picking up our hire car and heading off to a beach called Elafonisi beach also known as pink beach as the sand has a pink hue. As we were on holiday we even paid for some sun loungers on the beach (also because there was no shade on the beach and we planned to be there a couple of hours). After a couple of hours relaxing on the beach we left, grabbed some lunch and headed to a town called Ellinikon where we were staying for the evening. I use the term town very loosely as when we got there we realised the town consisted of two B&Bs and that was it. The reason we were here though is that we were walking the Samaria Gorge the following day and the B&B we were staying in was less than 15 minutes from the start.

The following morning we were up by 6am to have breakfast and head to the gorge before all the tourists from the main towns arrived. We managed to be the first people into the gorge and started the 16km walk through the gorge. Luckily for me it was all downhill rather than uphill and we made good progress. I did have a little slip a couple hours in but apart from that we manage the walk with a couple of stops for water refills and food. The gorge was stunning with large rock walls and formations, stunning trees, wildlife including wild birds, goats and donkeys (which are used by the rangers to help stranded walkers). We managed the walk in 5-6 hours and at the end we walked up the hill to a cliff side church before heading to the black sand beach for a well-deserved swim in the sea. We relaxed on the beach until the ferry back arrived which then took us to the final bus we needed to catch and we managed to get back to the accommodation around 7pm, making it a very long day.

The next morning we did struggle to get out of bed, both due to muscle pain and exhaustion but we ate breakfast before heading to a town called Rethimno for a walk around the old town and had some lunch before heading to our new accommodation in Kerames which again was in the middle of nowhere. We also drove to Plakias where we would be diving the next day to do all the paper work needed.

The following day we headed to Plakias again for our two dives of the day. They were both shore dives and were just Rich, Me and another young girl. I was rather nervous but we did enjoy the dives, even if the company we went with felt like it was run by teenagers. We saw lots of fish and I even saw a small octopus. After the long day we just headed back to our accommodation in Kerames and had dinner while planning what we were going to do the next day.

As the last few days had been busy we decided to keep the hire car for another day rather than drive early in the morning to drop it off in Heraklion. So the next morning we headed into the city for a quick look around before we could check into our accommodation and that is when the robbery happened. We arrived back at the car less than 2 hours after leaving it and once we realised what had happened we headed to a café that was a couple of doors up from where we parked and asked if they had seen anything and if they could call the police. After a short wait they turned up and we explained what had happened and they told us to go the police station and they will have a look around and see if they could see the CCTV which was overlooking the car.

We headed to the police, filled in all the forms and gave a statement before heading to our accommodation to try and sort everything else out. First things first we had to get phone chargers as they were quickly dying and we needed them up and running. We then contacted our insurance to get them to send us claim forms and researched the embassy as we needed to head there the next morning. We also had to phone the car hire people and tell them what had happened as the lock was no longer useable in the car. The final phone calls were to cancel our ferry an hotel in Santorini the following day as we had no passports and so could not really leave the island.

The following morning, after meeting the car hire people to hire the car for another day (as we needed it to get around to sorting everything out. We headed back into Heraklion and parked the car (making sure not to leave any of our meagre remaining belongings in the car) and headed to the embassy where they helped us with emergency passports, applying for permanent passports (although this required several phone calls to the passport office in the UK and many different options being explored before we managed to agree with the Croatian consulate that they would take receipt of our passports until we arrived in the country). They also printed off all the documents we needed or had lost. We had arrived at 9am and didn’t leave till after 3pm at which point we decided we needed to go and buy some clothes (thank god for H&M) and wash the small bag of dirty clothing that had been left in the car. We also had to get our photos done for the passports and send all the signed documents back to the UK. Once all this was done we had to find accommodation for the night and book ourselves on the ferry out of Crete first thing the following morning.

Unfortunately all photos from Greece up to this point were lost in the robbery but here are some photos from our phones.