Day 7 - Crete

After three days of broken sleep on ferry floors, and a grand total of about two and a half hours’ rest, I found myself slumped on yet another bus—this time rattling from Kastelli to Hania. The plan was simple: catch a bit of kip between potholes. The execution, however, was sabotaged by a man four rows ahead who clearly thought he’d been born to broadcast.

He began in Greek, but soon switched to an excruciating American drawl. “Greece,” he declared, “is the same size as the United States.” When his audience didn’t bite, he raised the stakes: “The map makers are liars, they just want to ridicule the Greeks! I can prove it. It took me the same time to drive from New York to San Francisco as it did from Thessaloniki to Neapoli!”

And on and on he went, like a scratched record nobody wanted to own. I considered explaining that America is roughly 3.5 million square miles compared to Greece’s 60,000, but in my current state I couldn’t decide whether to deliver this information with words or a size-12 trainer to his jaw. In the end, I chose the only sane option: ignore him and drift into fantasies of sleep.

Breakfast was hardly worth the name—bread, crisps, melon—and Wayne and I scribbled postcards home in the classic traveller’s style: “Sorry can’t write much, in a hur...” Enough to let everyone in Wales know we were alive, if not entirely well.

The next bright idea was to hitch across Crete to Malia, ignoring the sage warnings of my guidebook. We shouldered our rucksacks and trudged out of Hania. After 5 kilometres, 85°F heat, and a steady waterfall of sweat down my back, we descended into that familiar travelling mood: the blame game.

“You bastard, Wayne, this is all your fault.”

“It was your idea to hitch, dickhead.”

“No it wasn’t, I thought you’d have the Greeks sussed by now.”

“The Cretans are different, you long-legged wanker. And the book said get the bus.”

So we got the bus.

First to Iraklio, which from my initial impression should really have been named “Excrete.” I’ve never come to terms with Mediterranean elephant-foot toilets—squat, aim, and pray for accuracy. Judging by the stench and the splattered misses, elephants had clearly been testing them before us. Give me a quiet hedgerow any day.

From there, we caught another bus to Malia, only to overshoot and trudge back to Stalida. This, apparently, was where our friends Andy Fatman and Jane were holed up. Malia itself could have been Rhyl-on-the-Med: British lager louts everywhere, hardly a Greek face in sight, while the locals kept wisely to the shadows.

Finding the Stallos Hotel was an odyssey in itself. When we finally arrived, sweaty and sunbaked, I tried to stride in confidently. But the owner blocked me with a palm to my bare chest.

“No English,” he barked.

“Not English,” I protested, “I’m Welsh, here to see my friends.”

He shook his head, immovable. “It is policy. No English.”

“I’m Welsh!”

Still nothing. His palm didn’t move, his face didn’t flicker. No English, full stop. Twice in one day the Greeks had made violence feel like an attractive option—but I swallowed it down.

We never did find Andy or Jane. Instead, Wayne and I cooked aubergine, courgettes, and onions on the beach, and slept there under the stars. The views, I have to say, were decent—particularly the liberated German women who seemed determined to redefine topless sunbathing for the reunified Fatherland.

Been feeling a little pissed off today, probably due to the lack of sleep over the past week. In a bit of a dilemma over what to do next.