Gorge of the Dead

Up until now, we have been doing mostly touristy activities in Greece. We planned to go to Kato Zakros, which has a Minioan site, as kind of our "off the beaten path" part of the trip. Kato Zakros is on the east coast of Crete. It's pretty remote and the pictures looked beautiful. Kato Zakros also has a nice beach. We took a bus that went to a town called Sitia, which took about 3 hours, and then another bus to a town called Zakros. Kato Zakros is located about 2.5 miles from Zakros, and there is no bus to get there.

So you have two choices. One, you can take a taxi, or two, you can hike the 2.5 miles through a place called the Gorge of the Dead. The Gorge of the Dead is named because Minoan graves have been found in the caves that line the gorge. According to our guide book, the gorge emptied out right into the place we would be staying. I love an adventure, so that sounded awesome to me.

Tamzen thought it would be better to take a taxi since we had our luggage with us. I said I would be glad to carry our luggage if she would go on the hike. She was still skeptical. When we arrived at Zakros, a nice German lady asked us if we would like to split a taxi to Kato Zakros. At that point, things had been going so well, that Tamzen decided maybe we should go ahead and hike the gorge. So off we were to the Gorge of the Dead.

We saw a sign pointing us to the Gorge of the Dead trail. So off we went to adventure and beyond!

In the above picture you an see the beautiful Cretan countryside. The town of Zakros is on the left.

They grow mostly olive trees here, but also orange and lemon trees. They have a lot of goats too. We liked seeing the goats. They made funny noises and had bells on their necks. However, we really had not seen a gorge at this point. It was more like we were hiking through some dude's olive plantation.

Then we looked down the road and said, "Ah look, the Gorge of the Dead." It looked pretty disappointing to us, but oh well. Then the path did not really take us there—it more dead ended in an olive grove. Getting lost in an olive grove is worse than it sounds. You see, the whole island of Crete is an olive grove. Fun fact—there are 62 olive trees for every one Cretan. In any event, we saw a road, so we went to the road. We knew there was like one road on this side of the island and it went to Kato Zakros, so we walked along the road.

The road ended up running alongside this gorge. We were excited because it was a large gorge with caves. This must be the real Gorge of the Dead.
Also it emptied out into a a little town on the coast. We went to the town, looking for the place we were going to stay called Yiannis Retreat. We found a place with a sign that said Yiannis Retreat. A nice British lady answered the door but told us this was her condo and not the place we were looking for. She told us the place we were looking for was down the road. We went down the road but did not see it. It turns out she was not a nice British lady at all. Fortunately, we saw a restaurant called Akrogiali Taverna run by a guy named Nicos. We had read about Akrogiali run by a guy named Nicos in the guidebook as one of the good places to eat in Kato Zakros. We stopped there to call Yianni's to find out where they were located. We were a little disappointed. The town looked run down and not very nice. Not at all like the pictures on the website.

We found out why. We were actually in the wrong town. We were in a town 8 kilometers south of Kato Zakros (I don't really know how far 8 kilometer is, like 3 or 4 miles maybe). Later we found out we had taken one of many hiking trails in the Gorge of the Dead area. However, this one led no where near the Gorge of the Dead and the road we got on took us further south of Kato Zakros, bypassing the Gorge of the Dead entirely.

Tamzen explained the situation to the lady at the place we were staying. The lady told us to go to Zakros and get a taxi. That was not what we wanted to hear since we had walked for about 3 and half hours at this point. Right now I thought that Tamzen was probably going to add another body to the Gorge of the Dead. In any event, it was just a miscommunication and they sent a taxi. The taxi drove us exactly past where all we had spent the last few hours walking.

Fortunately, we fell in love with Kato Zakros. This is the view from our room. You can see the sea in the background. When we arrived at our room, I was very thirsty. There was a bottle on the table. In Greece, the water is not bad for you, but it usually doesn't taste great, so everyone drinks bottled water. As I said, I was thirsty, so I took a big swig out of the bottle. It turns out it was not water but Raki. For those not in the know, Raki is a beverage made by fermenting the leftover parts of the grape after you have made wine. Its then heavily distilled. Substitute corn for leftover grape parts and you have moonshine. So that is essentially what Raki is - Greek moonshine only with grape stems, leaves, and peels rather than corn mash. It is a tasty beverage but not what you want when you are thirsty.

This is the view from the taverna we ate at - the real Akrogiali run by Nicos. It was awesome. They had a big charcoal grill beside the restaurant. Not like a Weber grill or anything but a homemade grill. They took fresh fish and grilled it whole over the grill with lemon, olive oil, and oregano. This was probably the best food we had in Greece. Tamzen had a wonderful fresh swordfish filet.

We knew it was fresh because we saw this outside the restaurant. Sorry I could not figure out how to turn the picture upright.

Here we are on the beach outside of our room - see Tamzen did not kill me after all. The water is really that blue. Homer called the Aegean sea the "wine dark sea." I am not sure what kind of wine he was drinking.

Look how clear the water is.

Oh, outside our hotel room we saw this. This is actually the Gorge of the Dead. You can see a sign on the left. We decided we really did not want to hike it.