The unexplored island of Crete, Greece

Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, i proudly present you, the snow covered Agia Barbara !

Hmm, i mean, wtf, we must be mad riding in this weather...
Many of the locals think the same or guess that we have lost our road. They even offer us some Raki and a bit of food if we care to stop for a few hours (the hospitality i wrote about in another post...) but we wanted adventure!
Maybe on our way back we might take a bite or two ...

At Agia Barbara we turn right toward the village of Zaros and Gergeri. A few hundred meters after there is a big slope and a point with clear view towards west. We first try our luck here, just to check how things are.






Same here as the whole island...
Snow snow snow.
Better turn the bikes around and get to the main road while we still can.

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Well, definitely not looking good. We have now 0 grad C the roads is slippery and it starts snowing a bit heavier.
That invitation for a Raki we got earlier starts to become more and more tempting...
Still, we can see a bit of blue sky sometimes and...






...and even the sun can pass those snowy clouds.

We where about to give up when, well, when a 70 year old shepherd arrives with his old scooter and its almost sleek tires.
He salutes us, chats a bit and...




...just continues his ride like nothing out of the ordinary is happening, to feed his sheep up the mountains... :huh






Well, if a 70 year old man with a shitty scooter and shitty tires can continue riding, so can we so get back on the bikes!
We ride SOUTH !

Some cars are coming from the south without chains on their tires. Seems that the road doesn't get worse at least.









But just before we enter the Messara plain...

...the snow stops from falling and the roads are clear. As seen in the picture, under a certain altitude there is no snow!






And not only that, even the sky gets clear letting the sun warm us. You know, this is not an uncommon sight, different weather north and south Crete.

First stop after finding the sun again is at 11:45 at the monastery of Odigitria.








You might wonder what the hell the next picture is about...
Well, Kiriaki and yns had no proper winter gloves...
It was cold...
So, Kiriaki came up with the idea to use a pair of kitchen gloves under the the summer ones. And, it worked just fine

From the monastery there are two dirt roads heading south. We take the right one, which is a dead end but leads to some interesting places.

If you could just forget the snow covering the island...





...you could definitely state that we are having a easy pleasant ride in SPRING !

See this hill? It is called Kefali (translation: Head) and that's where we are heading right now.

At last we arrive at the top of the hill. The view is SPECTACULAR!

















You can see the small islands Gavdos and even the tiny Gavdopoula which is 70 kilometers away from here!

Near the small church are some ruins (a bit hard to find, they are dug into the rocks). Here was a German World War II observatory we heard. Of course we climb into the ruins and explore the site.





Which leads us to the cliff...









Cape Lithino, perhaps the most southern point of Crete

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The observatory seems like the perfect place to eat lunch. But first lets get rid of the raincoats. It's relatively hot and we don't expect any more rain

Please join us in what seems like an ordinary picnic on a cool Summer day!

The rest of the ride comes later, enough for now, i need rest. (01:00 here)

Btw, the last 48 hours we have small earthquakes, every 30 mins or so (and two medium ones). It gets really annoying now, i want my Martini stirred, not shaken

Good night for now...