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Dear David, A Series of Letters to A Longtime Friend March 2008
Hersonissos
Crete
Greece
March 2008
Dear David,
Yes I know this is later than usual, but then March is a busy time of year what with all the planting and the beginning of renovations ready for the tourist season.
Fortunately the weather has improved over last month and my nectarine tree, which usually blooms very early in February like the almond trees, is now in full bloom, I just have to hope that this year there are no hot south winds to burn the bloom and stop it fruiting. The potatoes that I planted for George are now well on their way in spite of the cold snap which delayed them by a few days, and in my own garden I have just planted out the tomatoes ready for the main summer crop. I have my usual annual spinach glut now that the weather is warmer, and also have a good crop of rocket and other salad leaves! The celery has been a bit of a failure as it has been in the ground too long and has started to bolt but I now know that I need to plant the seed later in the year and it will still be ready in the winter.
Now when I wrote about my visit to Kato Zakros and Vai Beach last time, it didn’t mean that I was going to start a series of critiques on the beaches of Crete! But since you asked me and I had the time to do it, I took a trip to the south of the island to Matala, one of the other famous (or perhaps I should say infamous!) beaches on the island. From my house in Hersonissos this is about a two hour drive and after leaving the main highway at the back of Iraklio, the road passes through several villages on its way to the large town of Mires (don’t go on Saturday, it’s market day and the traffic is horrendous), and on the way there is the old Roman capital town of Gortys which is well worth a stop. You could actually spend several hours just on this one site, if you are really, really interested in archaeology.
After leaving Mires there are two more sites at Agia Triada and, of course, Phaistos, home of the famous ‘disk’ which can be seen in the museum in Iraklio, and in countless reproductions in ceramic and metal! Phaistos being so important if anyone were coming this way, then I would recommend they stop for a while. The site is not large and unlike Knossos it is quite flat so anyone with limited mobility has a chance to get around (rather the same as Malia), Phaistos is also beautifully positioned at the end of a high bluff with views most of the way around.
Not much further to go down a few winding roads and you come to Matala. You pass a few apartments blocks and so on, on the way in and then you hit the village and beach. The village is small and sort of hangs on the rocks at one end of the black sand beach, and this about the moment I began to miss the whole point about Matala. The village is pedestrianised, but at this time of year the barriers were down and it was possible to drive through it and back out again. Within the village are a few bars, tavernas and gift shops, all that you would expect in fact, plus a large car park at the back of the beach.
The beach itself is not that large, whereas I had been expecting a vast sweep of golden sand, but this is not what Matala is really about, and I suppose I should have guessed when I saw two backpackers wearing Jesus sandals (in March?) heading into the village. In a way I was disappointed as was my travelling companion who has lived on Crete for many years but had never been to Matala. When in doubt about these things of course you ask someone else what they think. In this case I spoke to someone many years my junior and who certainly wasn’t even alive in the early 70’s! The next part is more or less a verbatim quote.....
‘You don’t go to Matala to sit on the beach, you go to Matala to experience the spirit of the 60’s, the soul of the hippies, and to absorb the atmosphere of a place where Joni Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix jammed together in the caves.’
Matala in the 60’s and early 70’s was home to a large colony of hippies, who lived in the Minoan caves, (which have since been used by the Romans as tombs), until they were finally evicted by the police. Joni Mitchell certainly visited and stayed there, (although I can’t find any reference to Jimi Hendrix), and her song ‘Carey’ was inspired by her time there, although there seems to be a bit of confusion with the actual dates which I can only put down to the atmosphere being a bit ‘heady’ at the time. Since then I have found a couple of people (not Greek), who were resident there during this time, and their opinion is much the same. Matala is about a spirit of place where new freedoms were found and founded. A pity we never went there! And today Matala is still on the ‘hippie’ trail, and I really think that I should go back there when it is open and stay a night or two. If the size of the car parks in comparison to the size of the village is anything to go by, it must be fairly heaving during busy times!
Nextdoor to Matala and accessible by a road to the right as you enter Matala is another beach at Kommos. There is a small Minoan site here as well, but other than a bit of a car park there is not a lot else but beach! Being on a side road, I wouldn’t think that this gets that busy and there is a lot of beach to go round as this really is a sweep of sand to the left, (I am told that the gay, nudist end of the beach is at this end next to the rocky outcrop which divides it from Matala). From the Minoan site the beach extends to the nearby village of Kalamaki, where I am told there is a German fighter plane on the beach. Either my eyesight is worse than I thought or someone has taken it away because I couldn’t see it.
And anyway it was lunchtime and as there was somewhere open we stopped and I had the best home made beefburger I think I have ever had, at a small taverna just off the beach in Kalamaki called ‘Athinavoles’.
After the usual leisurely lunch we headed for home, and taking a wrong turning ended up in a small village called Kouses. Sometimes it is amazing what you find by accident, and in Kouses we found a shop called ‘Botano’ which sells a huge range of herbs and teas!
I think that this is going to be it for day trips out for the rest of the summer, so don’t ask for any more beach reviews until the autumn!
Now while you are getting ready for Easter, us here in Greece are just about to have Lent, which means it is carnival time, with parades and music and fancy dress, something that the tourists never see, especially when we actually have an early Easter and Carnival time comes in February! The shops are full of Superman and Spiderman outfits for the kiddies and as you would expect there are French Maids, archbishops, witches, and cowboys as well. At Eros Bar in Malia, our self proclaimed and only openly gay bar on Crete, drag is of course the order of the day. I have put a couple of pictures on the website for you. Would the real Amy Winehouse please stand up!
Of course Lent is taken seriously here, not least of all by me, and being nearly vegetarian as you know, I have been known to chew on the occasional piece of meat and enjoy it, so around this time I tend to stock up on the food front which is why usually I put on about 5 kilos at this time, and then take until August to lose it again. Thank Heaven for baggy T-shirts!
And of course with ‘the season’ looming it is a time to catch up with friends before we all disappear off to work for the summer and not see each other again until October, and what better way to do it than around a table full of food! Sometimes though it is nice to go out and eat, if only to avoid the washing up, so Wenders and I decided we would go and try out a new meze place that opened during the winter. This may seem to be a funny time to open a restaurant, but it is quite usual here. In fact winter visitors often ask where they can eat, and if you live here then you know of places tucked away in corners.
Not often am I moved to write about food, as I am usually too busy throwing it down my neck, but this time I have to say something! ‘Ta Filarakia’ (it means ‘Friends’ as in the TV series) appears on my web camera page and up until now I had not been there, and I was impressed! It is located in a side street off the main road through the Port and is opposite the OTE office, so to the summer visitor it is hardly on the main drag unless your apartment block happens to be around there.
Like many of these places, Mother is at the helm in the kitchen and the style is best described as ‘rustic’. I suppose the front to the bar looks a little like a stockade! It is not a big place with about nine tables in and about the same out. If they light the fire one table is lost, unless they happen to be serving barbecued customer that night. The boss was a bit worried about us reading the menu, presumably because it is only in Greek, which wasn’t really a problem, one of the first things you always learn about is food otherwise you would starve to death! No, the main problem there was a small typeface in brown on a fawn background and not very bright lights! While age has its own virtues, reading small print is not one of them.
Eschewing the usual tzatziki and Greek salad, we paid homage to healthy eating by ordering horta, (it was actually spinach but what really is the difference?), and then we went into the healthy stuff, saganaki, feta from the oven, pancetta, kalamares, peppers (those long light green ones, we nearly ordered them stuffed with cheese but decided two lots of cheese were enough), and liver done the Greek way, lightly battered or floured and then fried (or done in a hot oven) with a bit of rosemary. To flash cook liver, in bite sized chunks, so that it is almost crisp on the outside but still pink on the inside and so tender it melts in the mouth is a real challenge! After what seemed like hours of eating there was still enough pancetta to bring home for a treat for the dog, and certainly no room for deserts, although I did notice they have that sponge cake drizzled with honey and syrup, and fig spoon sweet! Perhaps I shouldn’t have had three pieces of bread to mop up the juice from the liver and the peppers, or maybe it was the paximathia I had first off. Better still the bill was only €27.50 for the two of us without the wine! At €5.50 the pancetta was the most expensive bit we had.
While I have been writing this a friend from Elounda has called to ask me if I would drive a couple of his friends from England around for a couple of days, so you may well get another travelogue next month, and as I sit here my ADSL connection is going on and off, and there isn’t even as south wind blowing.
There si a link to some pictures on the web site here http://www.villaralfa.com/matala.html
And yes I will include a bit about Easter next time I write, but you will have to wait until quite late in the month as Easter is not until the last weekend in April.
Yours, as ever
FOOTNOTE: This article first appeared in March 2008, on the now defunct 'gaylinkcontent.com' web site and is republished here for the sake of my avid fans. Some of the information contained in it may now be incorrect. It is free to publish PROVIDED you include the link to my web site and the source of the article. Please do NOT splatter it with those horrible 'in line' links to web sites that have nothing to do with me.
About the Author
Born in England (in spite of the name!), in the last half of the last century when Sussex was Miss Marple country and you could leave yours door unlocked for days, the author is unashamedly gay and everyone seems to know in spite of the fact that he never 'came out'!