George took us to a wonderful lunch in Chania, I even had a little as I started to feel better after Jess took care of me earlier on the beach with Powerade and sesame sticks. Then he drove us 20km to his house in a little village called Lakki. We had no idea what to expect just knowing that he lived in the mountains with a vegetable garden. Wow, the place is majorly rustic but the view and location are sublime. Sheep running around, orange tree groves on the drive up replaced by olive trees as we got closer. Outside shower, toilet that required outside water, a sweet hammock, and an internet connection. What more could you need??? We settled into George's mountain hideaway for our stay on Crete.
The next day we decided to visit Balos Bay. We heard from George and read that it was a very picturesque place on the southwest part of the island about an hour from Lakki. We hitched a ride in with George to Chania, caught a bus and found ourselves in a town about 5km from the port where we needed to catch the boat to Balos Bay. We started walking to the part and decided to try our luck at hitch hiking again. Not 5 minutes into our walk we hitched a ride from an old Greek Crete native(see picture) in his beatup old Nissan pickup who was originally going to drop off us at the port. Turns out he was traveling to Balos as well and offered to take us the whole way. He has traveled the world during his life, lived in Australia, the US, married/divorced an Australian woman and had come back to Crete to live. The road to Balos was in a word horrible. Rocks, holes, cliffs with sheer drops on one side and goats wandering across the road. The views however, were stunning and it was worth the ride. Our friend was traveling to Balos to help his friend who runs the only bar(place) at the top of the Balos. If you drive to Balos you actually have to hike down 20 minutes to the bay. So after saying goodbye to our new friend we started to hike down to Balos. What an amazing view down and once at the bay it is even more stunning. The water was warm and the sun was hot, we pitched our sarong and played in the water(see pics). We knew since we did not take the boat we needed to catch another ride back to the town to catch the bus. So we hiked back up to the parking lot and I asked the first couple we saw. Turns out they were Italian, younger then we were, on holiday for a few weeks. They were staying in the next town over and offered to give us a lift that far. Their names were Butch and Francesca, he taught music at university and she worked in marketing. We had a drink with them and learned about each other's lives. We also lost track of time and missed our bus so we decided to hitch again. It was getting dark so it made more difficult but about 10 minutes in we were picked up by a guy on his way to Plantanais, which is the town next to Chania where we needed to catch the bus. He was a taxi driver during the day, what irony, and did not speak much English but we were thankful for the ride. Once in Plantanais we caught the regional bus into Chania but missed the bus and needed to take a taxi to a town close to Lakki where George picked us up. What a day and night, truly the good energy of the traveller.
We decided to travel to the island of Santorini for a few days before returning to Crete to see George again. We needed to leave the following day and George had a new couchsurfer coming in so it worked out well. The new guest was named Nomi and she was a little odd, traveled to Crete based on a dream and a psychic's vision to meet some hippy like Crete guy who did not want her to stay with him and while the three of us were waiting for George to get off work would not answer his cell phone when she called. It did not seem to make sense to even idealists dreamers like Jess and I but not our life, we were on our own journey. We came back into town and caught the night bus to Irakalias about 3 hours away.
We only traveled to Irakalias to catch our ferry the next morning to Santorini so we did not care were we stayed for the night. We ended up staying in a "hostel" not to far into town. This place turned out to be little more then a flophouse to us with a snoring bear, smoker and naked old man in our room. I fruitlessly complained the next morning and we were off for the ferry a little cranky and sleep deprived.
