September 14: Damouchari–Kissos
9.81 km; 664 m (-217) ascent.
After a night somewhat plagued by mosquitoes, the morning dawned clear and warm.
Breakfast wasn’t served til nine, but hotel dad happily made us coffee to drink while we worked.
Then it was time to walk to Kissos.
Remember the super steep trail we hiked down yesterday? Well, the terrain doesn’t change when you walk north… back up. Today’s hike began with a nearly vertical climb uphill, and then another nearly vertical descent down to Agios Ioannis and the beautiful Papa Nero beach.
The water called and I couldn’t resist!
Then we began the walk proper. Today’s objective was to regain the altitude we lost coming down to the coast. (Somehow our voucher computed this hike as gaining 300 meters and losing 700, which seems unlikely since we started on the beach and finished in the mountains.) The salt dried stiff on my shorts, while my tank top stayed wet with sweat all day.
The hike was a mere 7.5 km, but my goodness it felt hard! It was supposed to take 4 hours, but it took us around six. We climbed and climbed.
Chris ran out of water halfway through, but fortunately we could stop at a taverna and refill.
We saw more evidence of last year’s devastating Storm Daniel. The trail petered out into a mud bank at one point. I scrambled up the tree roots in an attempt to get through, but it was not to be; we had to retrace our steps and walk up the paved road.
In the beech forests, I saw what looked like beech drops, Epifagus virginiana. It’s a bit of a puzzle because beech drops are root parasites on the American beech, Fagus grandifolia, and while these were growing on beech roots, they certainly weren’t American. This was the only place I saw this plant in Greece.
Chania (not to be confused with the city in western Crete), the location of our night’s accommodations, was much too far to walk. Our trail finished in the town of Kissos, another hill town that lay on the far side of a valley—and predictably at the end of a stiff climb.
We shuffled into Kissos at 4:00, with enough time to grab a snack at a taverna before our pickup at 5:00. We got a horiatiki—I think we might have eaten horiatiki every single day of this trip—and a dish of sautéd sausage, tomatoes, peppers, and onions called spetzofai. Spetzofai is said to be local to Thessaly, but it sure looks like a southern Italian dish to me.
Right on time, Manthos, the young and energetic owner of Manthos Mountain Resort in Chania, showed up in the village square with our suitcases in the back of his SUV. We drove higher up into the mountains, the temperature dropping noticeably until we arrived at the ski resort, where autumn had unambiguously arrived.
It turned out to be a good thing we ate a big, late lunch. The hotel restaurant was closed that evening, so we walked into town to see what we could find. And what was that?
Nothing! No restaurants, no grocery stores. The only place still open was selling local honey.
Chris made a dinner of granola bars left over from our bag lunches, and we whiled away the evening in our room watching Mamma Mia on a laptop.
