A Trip Through Western Crete (or, Why Do I Have A Dead Frog In My Backpack)

This is a story about hiking the Samarian Gorge in Crete back in 1998. The Samarian Gorge is the longest gorge in Europe.

Greek Traveler-At-Large Grant met up with this editor Thursday to take a 4 day trip to Crete. Planning for this trip included drinking some Amstels before packing and discussing how boring reading the guide book was. Upon arrival in Hania, Crete, after a boat ride on a nice but Arctic temperature ferry, with no sleep, the traveling duo discussed what they should do. Of course, at 6 in the morning on Friday nothing is open in Hania so they took a taxi into town to watch the sun rise.

Once there was enough light to read the guide book this editor suggested taking a trip to the Samarian Gorge, the most famous gorge in Crete and, as they would discover later, the longest. Later, the prophetic words in the guide book “Proper footwear is essential” would come back to haunt the pair.

Undeterred by the fact that the editor was wearing city boots with heels, and Grant had only sandals, they hopped a bus for Samaria. What follows is a kilometer by kilometer tour of the gorge:

KM 1 – Stop every 100 feet to take a picture. The gorge is beautiful from the top. Even though our footwear is a little lacking, we did remember to bring our bathing suits because Grant has assumed there will be a nice pool of water and a water fall at the bottom of the gorge that we can swim in.
KM 2 – My feet hurt a little. The trail isn’t as tourist friendly as I figured. We should reach the bottom soon, though, so I’ll keep going.
KM 3 – My feet fucking hurt. Are we there yet?
KM 4 – Four stupid German girls just passed us and they were laughing at my footwear. I’m going to push them into the gorge.
KM 5 – Mutiny. Threaten to kill Grant if we don’t turn around. Am persuaded to continue because “we’re almost there”. An image of a pool of water a few kilometers away keeps me going.
KM 6 – Stop a guy and ask how much farther. He tells us 9 KM. Grant will be drowned in the river if we ever reach it.
KM 7 – Grant’s sandals are disintegrating and my boot soles are almost non existent. We have finished our small bottle of water. We are going to die in the gorge. Grant is mumbling incoherently about the pool of water.
KM 8 – We see some ruins from WWII where the Cretans had an outpost to fight the Nazis. Big fucking deal, my feet hurt.
KM 9 – We see lots of kri-kri, the endangered puffy sheep like animals that run around the gorge. I hope one will come up and offer me a ride. No such luck. And Grant has finally read the guide book and tells me there actually is no pool of water at the bottom of the gorge.
KM 10 – We see a large rock with smaller rocks piled on top of it like pieces of wood in a jenga game. They are put there by the hikers. We contribute two rocks and take some pictures.
KM 11- A guy in cammo walking the other way tells us to watch for falling rocks. We ARE going to die.
Km 12 – No rocks have fallen on Grant yet in spite of the editor’s attempts to be psycho kinetic.
KM 13 – We reach the “Iron Gates”, where the gorge narrows dramatically. More tourists ridicule my footwear and generally hobbled state.
KM 14 – 17 We both agree we hate the gorge. Will this nightmare ever end????
KM 18 – The gorge opens up to the sea. We see a guard shack where they ask us to return our tickets that Grant has somehow managed to lose. They feel sorry for us and let us go. I see a beer stand!
KM 18 – The guards kick us out of the park after 1 beer. The park is closed. We also find out the only way home is to catch a ferry at the nexr town. What do you mean we have 3 more kilometers to walk to the ferry????
KM 19 – More kri-kri. Do they care that I am now an endangered species?
KM 20 – Grant spies a completely flattened dead frog in the road and picks it up. I tell him to put it down.
KM 21 – I ask Grant where the frog is and Grant says he threw the frog away. I find it the next morning in my backpack trying to locate the source of a foul odor.
KM 22 – I see the lights of Agia Roumeli.
KM 23 – Hop on a ferry to Sfakia. Drink many Mythos on the ferry which later proves to be a bad decision as the bus ride to Hania takes 1 ½ hours with no bathroom breaks.

Editor’s Note: Although it was Grant’s fault that this editor suffered greatly he made up for it by treating the editor’s blisters for the rest of the trip. He did, however, say she had “Medusa Feet” which upset the editor so greatly he had to buy her band aids with dinosaurs roller skating on them to get her to speak to him again.