Eight Feet and Two Weeks On Crete Part 2 (2/3) By Steve Rudd

(1/3) (2/3) (3/3) Part 1

Luckily for us, the day we walked the gorge the weather was relatively overcast and so not as humid as we feared it might be. It is quite a tough walk if you aren't used to trudging over rocky surfaces, so be warned. Some people also inevitably succumb to heatstroke. For this reason there are in the region of five donkeys (and a man who looks after them) spread along the length of the gorge to aid anybody who might need help in getting out. At a steady Sunday-stroll kind of pace we managed to reach the sea in just short of five hours, leaving plenty of time to have a swim in the sea and get a gyros to eat, along with an ice-cold Amstel to drink. The last ferry of the day left at 6 o'clock sharp, leaving no time for stragglers.

In the South-Western region of Crete, in the vicinity of the Samaria Gorge, there a couple of other gorges that are well worth checking out, such as the Imbros Gorge (which also makes for a very popular walk), and the gorge at Aradena (which is just a little east of Samaria). The day before we headed down Samaria, two of my friends got it into their heads that they had to jump off the rickety road bridge that crosses the aforementioned Aradena Gorge. There was good reason for this. Well, it wasn't so much a good reason as a relatively insane one.

See, the week before when we'd walked into the exhilaratingly hustling and bustling city of Rethymno we'd noticed the odd poster or two advertising a bungee jump event there. Billed as the 'highest bridge jump in Europe,' resistance was futile. But we didn't really know how to find Aradena from where we were stationed in the tiny village of Gerani, and still had no idea when we arrived in Hania on the final jump-day, frantically searching the city's billboards for copies of the same poster that we'd seen promoting the jump. At the time we'd not jotted the details down about where exactly on the island the Aradena gorge was.

Luckily we found a poster in Hania, which I proceeded to rip off the wall of a supermarket for good measure, but as far as where the location was, we were still none the wiser until a travel agency was noticed around the corner and I asked there for directions.

Yes, we were way off and had to back-track down the highway towards Gerani, but before arriving at Gerani we had to take the turning for Vrises (where there is a wine-making and tasting establishment that's more than worth a visit - along with the affiliated shop that also sells home-produced olive oil, honey and the like) in order to slowly but surely make progress over the massive bulk of the White Mountains towards the South Coast. About forty-five minutes later when the Libyan Sea could be seen shimmering in the distance and we thought we were nearly there as we passed the Imbros Gorge, we had to think again.

Seriously, it took in the region of thirty minutes just to carefully wind our way down the last mountain side to sea level, such was the height that we'd attained, and the intense way that the road zigzagged down the hair-raising flank. My friend Matt, who was determined to go through with the bungee jump, had the ordeal of driving our faithful Jimny out and about too. I could have legally driven if I'd wanted to, but the other guys don't really trust the quality of my driving so that was that.

Continued ... next page (3/3)

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