Escape from Samaria Gorge

The Samaria Gorge is 16 km long and 500 meters deep and runs from the White Mountains to the Southern Coast of Crete.   Our trek into the Samaria Gorge began with realistic expectations.  According to the website (my husband checked)  the hike was not difficult and would take three hours, four hours with frequent stops and six hours for the slowest people on earth, so 4 hours was our target.  The same source said 3.000 people hike the Samaria Gorge on the busiest days of the summer, so it sounded more like a superhighway than a challenge.

The beginning was steep and slow.  Luckily, Nana and our four year old son stayed behind at the Villa!  My husband was carrying precious cargo on his back; our 17 month old daughter, but he was always way ahead of me, as I tried to be cautious with my tendonitis.  We kept looking forward to the easy part that “anyone can do” to make up time, but it never came.   Our concern grew when 4 hours had passed and we hadn’t even reached the halfway point.  Yikes!  There is only one way in and one way out!

To make a really long day into a slightly shorter story, we walked for eight hours straight with only one 10 minute break for a diaper change.  When we did make it out ALIVE at 18:00, we discovered that we had missed the last (only) boat and the next one would be at 16:30 the following day.  We hitched a ride in a black pick up truck for the last five minutes of the way into Agia Roumeli.  When the driver couldn’t convince us to spend the night in his family run hotel, he arranged a water taxi to rescue us.  Captain George, was a camouflage clad guy with a red scraggly beard and equally scruffy boat.  Thirty minutes later and 100 euros lighter, we found ourselves tightly gripping the boat as we bounced violently toward Sougia.  There, Captain George’s brother in law, the taxi driver was waiting to take us back to our car.  It was just our luck that in the middle of nowhere, we would have one of the only taxi drivers in the world driving a shiny new Audi Q7.  I don’t know much about cars, but last year when we started seeing them on the road, we went to the dealer and it was WAY BEYOND our price range, nearly 100.000 euros.  We had to stop a few times along the dark, windy mountain road, to get the herds of goats out of the way and the last time he hit the breaks, there were over 100 on the road and we were just 500 meters from our car,  when my daughter puked all over (more me than the car).

I have skipped most of the details of the agony of the walk itself,but would like to add that despite the small accident in the Audi, I gained new respect for my daughter that day.  She was the best sport of the three of us about being stuck in the  backpack for the entire day.  She was even joyful!  A few times when I grabbed my husband’s shoulder for extra support, she even peeled my fingers away one by one with her tiny hands as she laughed.  I always like to look on the bright side, she could have puked on one of us much earlier in the day.  We also had a romantic sunset boat cruise and luckily my husband didn’t even consider asking me to join him to climb Mt. Gingilos 2 days later.

One piece of advice when traveling during these difficult economic times and always.  Cash is king!  Even when, especially when you will be traveling in an area where there is nothing to buy, have plenty of cash on you!  We happily bought our way out of this predicament (yes, I did hand over the rest of my cash to the taxi driver).  The only people that came out of the Gorge after us happened to be three dutch 20 somethings (it took them 7 hours).  They weren’t getting very far with their Pin pass (atm card) and no cash!

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