Photo Albums

I've just uploaded some more photo albums:  Athens,  Chania Town, Mountains & Villages, Ancient Aptera, and Santorini.  Check them out.

Driving on the Wrong Side of the Road...

The last couple of days we've done quite a bit of exploring which, of course, involved us driving our tiny little car (it's a Fiat Panda, not a Punto) on the wrong side of the road over winding mountain roads; through small villages where cars are parked on both sides of the road, and you have to breathe in to get even a motorbike through; as well as the towns with cobbled streets, heaps of people, cars and no rules about where to park or stop and have a chat with the guy in the next car.  It's been interesting, to say the least.  And I don't know how the bus drivers manage to manoeuvre through all this, but they do. 


Before we left Australia, Trevor loaded an app called iGo onto his phone, which has maps of Greece on it, and it has been really helpful - don't know how we'd have managed without it.


We travelled over the mountains through numerous little villages (all with their own tavernas) down to Paleochora on the south coast of Crete.  We both took a turn at driving, though we were going much slower than the locals.  The scenery was spectacular - we passed through olive groves, orange orchards, vineyards, fields of wildflowers, and the glimpses of the Lefka Ori (the White Mountains) were amazing.


We had lunch at Galaxy, a seafood restaurant on the beachfront at Paleochora - baked swordfish and papoutsaki - delicious.  Again, free raki and dessert.  The town is on a small narrow peninsular, facing the Libyan Sea, with a rocky beach on one side and a sandy beach on the other.  Very pretty, but the wind was blowing and the waves were crashing over the seawalls - although it was a lovely sunny day, the wind was freezing.


From there we took a different route back over the mountains to Kastelli (Kissamos) where we stopped for coffee before heading home to Stalos.


Next day we drove East to visit Ancient Aptera, a town that was first established around 1400 BC.  The ruins include Roman baths and cisterns, an amphitheatre, temples, a villa, as well as a monastery, chapel and monks cells.  Also in the area is Koules Fortress, built in 1867, which is largely intact and has a magnificent view of the ocean. 



Our next stop was at Almerida, which is one of the areas I had looked at when trying to find accommodation in Crete.  The beach here was just gorgeous, with varying shades of crystal clear turquoise water, sand on one side of the bay, and pebbles/rocks on the other.  We had some lunch, then decided to take the plunge - well, the water was certainly crisp!  I managed to get in and have a swim and a bit of a snorkel, but Trev took some convincing.  Eventually, he got in too, and we saw a few small fish, anemones and that was about it.  But we've finally had our first swim in Crete!

Arrival in Chania, Crete

Our one-bedroom apartment in Stalos has a full kitchen, dining area and living area with a balcony overlooking the swimming pool and the ocean.  The owners, Dimitra and Manolis, left a decanter of home-made wine, home-made Raki and some greek pastries for us on the dining table - very welcoming.  It's a quiet rural/seaside area, with small tavernas around, and sheep in the back field.  However, it's quite a walk down (and up) the hill to the main road where we can catch the local bus into Chania, or Gerani.  Plenty of exercise to burn off all those carbs!  


After unpacking we walked down the hill to catch the bus for a look around Chania, a very pretty old town built around a Venetian harbour.  We were lucky to get a bus quite quickly, as we are right in the middle of the Greek Easter festival where everything slows down and the locals are on holiday. 

We did the tourist stroll around the front of the beautiful old Venetian Harbour, being accosted by touts trying to get us into their restaurants - I have to admit, some of them had very good lines, and we had some friendly interaction with them while 'running the gauntlet'.  As we kept going, other restaurants boasted 'No pressing, no stressing', or 'We don't talk, we just have good food' - quite funny.  We walked around past the Maritime Museum (which was closed) then found ourselves in a rabbit warren of narrow cobbled streets in the 'old town' - just lovely, and they had some beautiful little art shops, jewellery shops, local crafts etc, as well as numerous tavernas offering the same sort of fare as those on the front, but at cheaper prices.  


We ended up eating at Xani's, a small restaurant run by an Australian woman and her Greek husband.  Lovely food, and good conversation with the owners, as well as an Israeli couple sitting at the next table.  That was really interesting - they'd flown over for just a few days as the flight is only 1.5hours from Israel.  We talked about families, our countries, and then our flights, and how our layover was in Abu Dhabi - and they replied that they are not allowed to fly into there, indeed into any Arab state.  This was something that had not occurred to me, as being Australian we have virtually no restrictions about countries we can visit.  Quite sobering - again, I thought how lucky we are in Australia, when so many countries around the world are in the middle of wars, famines, and other atrocities - and how much we take for granted.

Over the past couple of days we've tried the food at several establishments, but on Monday we went back into Chania and found the seafood restaurants on the right hand side where of the harbour where all the Cretans eat.  We tried one of the recommended dishes from our waiter - fresh crispy skin snapper cooked in olive oil (of course!) and lemon with herbs (a Cretan specialty) with a Greek salad.  Delicious.  And of course they brought us complimentary warm bread, and ice cream and Raki to finish.  Probably one of the best meals we've had so far.  And we enjoyed people-watching as we had a leisurely lunch.


We had another wander through the old town, where I bought some lovely silver ear-rings in a Greek design, and a pendant to match.  My first purchase - I'm pacing myself!


We met Diane, the local agent for our apartment rental in Crete, and she gave us lots of info on what to see and where to go - she organised a car for us for the two weeks at 240 Euros for a Fiat Punto - pretty reasonable.  We went for our first drive on the wrong side of the road yesterday - that is, Trev drove.  Quite interesting, we went up into the mountains as we thought it would be quieter - that's true, but they were very narrow, winding roads, so Trev got a good workout.  And I was astonished to see these amazing snow-covered mountains in Crete - I really wasn't expecting it, and they are so beautiful.  They're a wonderful backdrop to all the towns along the coast and the harbour.


We drove throught Platanias, Kolumbari then on to Ravdoucha, which Diane told us was a good snorkelling area.  That was fun - for me anyway, not so much for Trev, as it really was a very winding, narrow mountain road - a bit like the 'Mama Mia Highway' on the Isle of Capri, Italy.  We only got lost once and ended up on a bit of a goat-track (the Rangie would have loved it) so we asked a little old Cretan man standing next to a field where the beach was - no English at all, and our Greek certainly wasn't enough, so I mimed 'swimming' and he pointed us in the opposite direction.  Yayy!  We retraced our tracks and finally ended up at the bottom of these huge rocks, expecting it to be totally deserted - but no, there is always a taverna at the end of every road!  And the beach was a very pebbly rocky one with a big swimming hole, so potentially it should be a good snorkelling area.  We'll return another day with our gear and check it out.  We had a coffee in the taverna, then headed back to our apartment, this time via the national highway.  


Time for a quiet night at home - eating out twice a day is getting rather expensive, not to mention very fattening!

Next Stop - Athens, Greece

After much anxiety and stress, I finally received my new passport (long story, but Australia Post is not on my list of favourite agencies!) on the morning of Tuesday, 10 April, so that we could actually leave Australia for Greece that evening.  We were travelling for the first time with Etihad.  Our flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi was 14 hours and we were three hours into our flight before we received our first meal and drink - not great service, staff not terribly friendly, a little disappointing, as we had heard good reports about Etihad.  


We had a couple of hours at Abu Dhabi, then a 3-hour flight to Athens, where we caught a taxi to our hotel, the Polis Grand Hotel in the Omonia district.   Our taxi driver barely grunted at us, certainly couldn't manage a smile, but got us to where we wanted to go in total silence.  A good start to Greek hospitality, I thought.  However, the manager at Polis Grand was very friendly and helpful, and we squeezed into the lift to take us to our room on the 6th floor.  The lift was cosy, to say the least - it took a maximum of 5 persons, but with two of us plus luggage, we were breathing in!  The room was small but adequate, with a great view of a new construction over the road, with scaffolding and green cloth enclosing it - lovely!  Good job we weren't planning to spend much time in it.


We walked around the area, trying to get our bearings, so we could plan our next couple of days.  We had a cheap dinner at one of the little tavernas around the corner (not terribly exciting, but we weren't too fussy about food at that stage, just wanted to get back to the hotel and have a sleep.  But not before we finished our evening at the rooftop bar at our hotel, with a lovely view of the illuminated Acropolis in the background.  Very civilised - I had a couple of 'home-made' strawberry and lemon cocktails which were very sweet but had a bit of a kick.  Trev also tried the local brew, Mythos.


While taking photos of the Acropolis I had a conversation with a young man from Libya who we'd spoken to earlier in the lift.  He told me he had been in Athens for 5 months, in the hospital - I assumed he meant he was working in the hospital, but no, he had been in hospital getting treatment for burns and bullet wounds - he said 'You have heard of Gaddafi, well, I was injured, I had burns on my legs and body and I had to come here for treatment'.  He showed me a scar on his arm that was caused by a sniper's bullet.  I was shocked - I asked if he was OK now, and he said, 'Yes, I am good now, thank you for asking about it."  We are so lucky in Australia - things like this are so foreign to us.

Next morning we purchased a two-day 'hop-on-hop-off' ticket on the red bus that would take us around most of the tourist spots in Athens as well as down to Piraeus, the port where we would be catching our ferry over to Crete.  This was definitely a worthwhile purchase, and a good way of getting an overview of Athens.  We visited Monastiraki, the Agora, the Acropolis, the Parthenon, Temple of Zeus, the Acropolis Museum, the Temple of Hephaistos and numerous other ancient buildings.  Despite the fact that we had bus tickets, we still walked several kilometres over the 2 days in Athens, so we should be getting fit. Except, of course, for the fact that everything we eat here is so full of carbs - breads, olive oil, cheese, and such huge serves!  And not only that, every time we eat, they give us either free appetizers, or free desserts and raki!  We're going to return to Australia as big, fat, drunken blobs! 


On Friday (which is Good Friday in Greece) we packed our bags and caught the metro, which is very clean, efficient, cheap and easy to use, to take us to Piraeus to catch our overnight ferry to Crete.  We spent the day in Piraeus, ate lots more food and drank lots more Greek coffee and raki (it's almost obligatory) then boarded our ferry, the FB Lato at 6.00pm.  It was a very nice ship, with a good dining room, reasonable prices and again, huge serves of food.  Our room was certainly very compact, with ensuite and flatscreen TV, and we both slept very well.  Must be all that walking!  We arrived in Crete at about 5.30am, and actually left the ship around 6.30am to be greeted by our driver to take us to Stalos for the next part of our holiday.

Time to go home...

We've all had a really interesting time here in Siem Reap, despite the heat and humidity, the 'organised chaos', and the occasional (or frequent, for some!) tummy problems.  The food was lovely, although with tummy problems we were not terribly adventurous this time.  We really enjoyed our Cambodian BBQ, even though a table of young people next to us were having a great laugh when we tried to eat the big slabs of fat (with chopsticks, too!) that were actually meant for putting on top of the BBQ to cook with!

Tonle Sap, Cambodia

Still submerged after recent flooding

We organised a trip through Beyond Unique Escapes to Tonle Sap, an enormous lake in the middle of Cambodia which is larger than the island of Singapore!  This lake is home to many floating villages, where families live on homes built on bamboo rafts, or stilt homes or boats.  The lake increases in depth by 9m or so every wet season, and the villages just 'go with the flow'.  About a month before we arrived in Siem reap all the outlying areas were over a metre under water from flooding, and many of these homes (on 9m stilts) were totally covered.  We could see all the water still covering the area when we flew into Siem Reap.  This flood has devastated the recent crops of rice, and affected the livelihood of many Cambodians.

Enjoying?? a fish spa

 

This is uploaded in Quicktime, so you may need to download it if you don't already have it. Check out the look on Trev's face!

Every Cambodian has a story....

During our 10 days here we've heard some interesting (and sad)stories from some of the people we've met.

One of our guides, Kim, took us to Tonle Sap, the huge lake in Cambodia that is larger than the island of Singapore.  On the way he told us of the first time he actually saw white people in 2003.  He was 20 years old at the time, and said he didn't understand what these 'strange white things with long noses' were!  He said:  "I asked myself what these things were - were they human, were they the same as me?'  We were absolutely astounded - until he explained that when he was young, there was no TV, no radio, as the Khmer Rouge had cut off access to the outside world. 

Temples, Tuk-Tuks and ... more temples!

Our driver, Pang, picked us up next morning in an air-conditioned van to take us to Angkor Wat.  We bought a 3-day Temple Pass for $40, which could be used within 7 days.  We first visited Angkor Thom, built in late 12th century, covering an area of 9 sq km.  Very impressive.  

We were, of course, assaulted by young street vendors offering books, silk scarves, bags and other assorted items. We managed to battle our way through unscathed, then moved on to the Terrace of the Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King.  This was a huge area and was very interesting, except that there were were too many bloody tourists (jumping in front of my camera when I wanted to take a person-free photo) and it was soooo hot and humid.  And we did, of course, get caught by the next lot of vendors and I ended up buying 4 bags and 5 scarves!  Lorraine also bought several bags, and Trev bought a book.  How does this happen, I ask myself every time?

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Our next adventure is again in Asia - our first time in Cambodia, accompanied by our friends Lorraine and Bill who have also travelled to Thailand and Vietnam with us.  We left Canberra on 5 November flying Malaysian Airlines and arrived in Kuala Lumpur for a 7-hour layover at 3.00am next morning.  KL airport has an airside hotel, so we booked in to have a decent sleep, shower and breakfast before the 2-hour flight to Siem Reap.  It cost around $48 but was well worth it for the few hours of sleep after a long flight.

We arrived in Siem Reap and were transferred to the Frangipani Hotel ... we'd booked deluxe poolview rooms, but didn't know that we'd be on the 3rd floor, with no lift!  That's 64 stairs at least 3 times a day up and down for 10 days - do the maths, that's a lot of stairs.  We all should be super-skinny by the time we get home.  

Menindee Lakes - Yabbie Heaven

It was just a short drive from Broken Hill to Menindee where we planned to stay for 2 or 3  nights.  The road was quite different to when we here last (2009) - green or grey shrubs and trees lined the highway, virtually covering the thick red dust that we drove through before.   We drove up to the Menindee Lake Lookout which used to overlook a huge, empty, dusty lakebed - well, there was water as far as the eye could see.

Quite a different outlook, especially along 'Sunset Strip', a small 'exclusive' suburb just outside Menindee, which was supposed to be a holiday village overlooking the lake - we drove in here in 2009 and found a cluster of dilapidated, tired old houses on the edge of a large dustbowl.  This time, they actually did overlook the huge Menindee Lake, and obviously many of the homeowners were making the most of the change in view, as they had their homes up for sale, hoping to 'cash in' now that there was water.

Flinders Ranges & Wilpena Pound

We hopped into the Rangie at 8.30am next day, ready to do one of the 4WD tracks up to Mt Gill, rated as 'hard' by the homestead managers.  It's a 54km round trip, and should take around 5 hours to complete - sounds like a slow and steady day!  Well, Trev started the car and 'bang', she backfired.  Trev said a couple of choice words, then went to check what had happened - the lid of the air filter box had completely blown off and broken in about 4 places.  Not a good start. 

So it was out with the toolbox, the super glue, the epoxy glue and other assorted bits and pieces.  None of the above seemed to work at fitting the jigsaw back together, so then he tried his little butane soldering iron (thanks, Pete!) and tried 'spot-welding' and melting the plastic pieces together, and it seemed to work.  He put it all back together, tied the lid on with a strap, and 2 hours later we were ready to go.

Coober Pedy Slideshow

Click here to view some photos from Coober Pedy