Wild poppies are flowering everywhere, so being Anzac Day we stop and pick a couple for our journey.
As we head into the hills again the roads become a never-ending succession of 180 degree-plus switchbacks, but before I start dreaming about swooping through them on the Raptor I'm quickly brought back to earth by the road conditions.
Rockfalls are common.
And the local residents definitely have right of way!
The scenery is fantastic, with every arable bit of land supporting either olive plantations or vineyards. Sheep and goats nibble around what's left. The highest mountains in the centre of Crete are still snow-capped even though spring's well advanced now. Not cold though - a temperate 19 degrees typically.
As we hit the south coast we head west for Aradaina, the start of one of the popular gorge walks to the coast. Had we been a few weeks later we would have walked the famous Samaria Gorge further to the west, but time wasn't on our side.
For some reason the locals seem to have a lot of fun using the road signs as targets, and judging by the size of the holes the calibres aren't trivial.
It's a long way to the bottom of the gorge from the rickety little traffic bridge with disintegrating boards that spans it. A stone takes 4.5 seconds to drop, and if I remember my high school physics correctly, that's about 100m (and ignoring air resistance for the purists!).
We head down into the picturesque little town of Hora Sfakia on the south coast. It was here at the end of May 1941 that the last of the British and Anzac troops were evacuated from the German army's advance. A fitting place for a quiet Anzac remembrance.
Lest we forget.
This might not be one of the more interesting photos for some, but I'm intrigued by the use of the interlocking tetrahedronal blocks used to form a breakwater. A nice spot for a picnic lunch too.
On to the little town of Matala nestled in a lovely little bay, where we have our accommodation booked for the night. We go through the standard mantra on arrival. Do you have wifi? What's the password. Will it reach to our room? Is the tap water safe to drink? Is breakfast included? Is your solar hot water boosted by electricity so we can shower in the morning? Yes, ..., no, no, yes, no. Good thing we asked! We shower and head out for dinner in town.
The Romans originally used these caves as burial tombs, but they've long since been ransacked. Hippies took them over in the 60/70s, and apparently Cat Stevens lived here for a while. Now they're just a tourist curiosity and sadly stink of urine from the boozy parties kids now use them for.
Dinner at a beachside cafe as the sun sets over the Libyan Sea rounds out a great day. And yes you can actually see continental Africa from the Cretan hills, but that's as close to Libya as we want to get at the moment.
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