Western Crete, Wednesday March 12th

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Today we continued our tour of part of western Crete, enjoying the company and knowledge of Lily and Andre. We started at Kasteli, where we visited an interesting museum that explained the history of the area through exhibits that were found in surrounding sites. There were two outstanding mosaics. One, representing the four seasons, was in near perfect condition. The other, showing Dionysius returning from a hunt, was incredibly complex and featured a detailed carriage being drawn by tigers as well as many, many different types of animals.

Like Athens, this small city requires an archaeological search before construction can begin on any building. We saw two areas that were currently being dug up and there were remains of buildings from earlier times in both.

The tour was regularly punctuated with stops for flower hunts, observations and photos.

We travelled through the little port town of Kavonisi, past Platanas and then on to Falasarna. This was the site of an ancient harbour in Roman times. There were clear remains of the quayside wall, with some stones with holes in them for tying up the boats. The ancient cistern for water storage was still impressive. The amazing thing was that none of it was near the sea. One day the land rose 6 – 8 metres, destroying the town and creating a new coast line quite a distance away.

We had lunch in a restaurant, with Lily ordering some typical Greek dishes for us to try. We had boiled thistles with lemon juice, Greek salad, stuffed vine leaves, zucchini balls, fried battered eggplant and little pastries, some with cheese in them and some with spinach in them. Delicious! The thistles grow wild everywhere and are the variegated prickly type. When I talked about weeds, it was a concept which caused some thinking for an equivalent translation in French. Lily and Andre know the uses for lots of plants and there doesn’t seem to be the same disregard for plants that the gardener didn’t plant. They did understand when we used the example of oxalis, which is just as invasive in Crete as it is at home.

After lunch we drove high up into the mountains to the village of Polirinia. There is a current village there, built in and around the ancient buildings and water system. We threaded our way on foot through narrow streets down to the site where water spilled from the mouth of a lion. A young woman walked ahead of us, setting her bucket down to be filled, just as women would have done at this spot since ancient times. Further back there were communal clothes washing troughs with built in stone scrubbing boards.

Climbing back up the steep streets we saw many deserted buildings and others that looked as if they were being renovated. Passing a particularly dilapidated one, Lily made the comment that it would probably be bought by a rich German and lived in for a short time each year. Many of the houses in some villages have been purchased by people from Britain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands and others, for a small price compared to their home countries. An ex-pat community forms, with people sometimes mixing and living in the Greek community and sometimes mixing predominantly with other ex-pats. Prices on Crete have sky rocketed for houses. Tourism is also a big industry, luring young people away from the traditional growing of olives and farming of sheep and goats to work in restaurants and hotels.

Eventually we came out at the top of the village, with still a climb ahead of us to reach the ruins of the Roman Acropolis. We could see fairly damaged remains of the walls high up on a peak but we stopped at the Church of the Ninety-nine Saints, which had stones from the ruins incorporated into its walls. Misty rain started to fall as we reached the car but we had been lucky that the grey clouds overhead all day had allowed us to be out and about up to that point.

It was difficult to keep our eyes open on the drive home but we didn’t want to miss any of the magnificent views around us.

At one point we joined a freeway with lights on poles all along it. Lily explained that, because Greece is in the European Union, it has to have its roads to the EU standard. In this case, the required lights had been built but they had never been lit, since Crete does not have enough electricity.

Lily and Andre searched their books for the Latin names for all the flowers we had photographed and Keith saved the photos on the computer and typed in all the names. It was a mammoth task but certainly very worthwhile. After tea we watched the movie that Andre and Lily’s daughter, Gael, had made for Andre’s 70^th birthday. It was hilarious, starting with a birth scene in which Gael played the part of Andre’s mother and a doll played Andre. It followed Andre through his school, military and amorous experiences, including his meeting with Lily. It had appropriate music and funny subtitles in French, which were translated for us when we needed it.

Andre and Lily love to tell a story and Lily, in particular, is a wonderful raconteur. They told us about many of the people that they have come to know in their village, always with humour, acute observations and compassion. One lady of ninety-two whom they knew, told them that when she was sixteen years old she had married a much older man in an arranged marriage. She bore two children, both of whom died. Her husband was then found to have leprosy so, rather than be exiled to the leper’s island of Spinalonga, he committed suicide by throwing himself out of a high window. (Imagine what that was like for her.) She married again later and had a family. One of her grandsons, who is about 58 years old, remembers getting his first pair of shoes when he was 14 years old. Times would have been extremely tough, quite apart from the war years which all the older people suffered through.

We had a wonderful time with Andre and Lily and hope that we will see them again. We may catch up with them when we are in Belgium if they are back at that time. They had no immediate plans for Australia but we would be thrilled if they could visit us there.

Lily explained that this view used to be very beautiful before all the 'tents' were erected. These huge plastic covered greenhouses have tomatoes two metres tall growing inside.