Plakas is Greek for...

Well, I think Plakas (the town I am staying in) is Greek for the middle of flipping nowhere!! This is GREAT! An all day bus ride (well, about a 4 hour bus ride and a 2 hour "layover."). Through the mountains the bus driver had his work cut out for him. We kept getting further along our journy and further from Western Civilization the roads keep getting more narrow and the guard rail eventually disappear almost entirely. A couple times while going up a mountain we had to stop and back the bus up because there was a car coming from the other direction and we both couldn't fit. Yea, it's all fun and games until someone plummets off the side of a 300' cliff. Which incidently is what I was staring down inches from my window of the bus... no guard rails...miles from anywhere w/the technology to put an American like me back together if broken like humpty dumpty... Oh well, the view was amazing anyway. This is like Zen, you really have to let it all go and live in the moment. Finally after what seemed like a decade in the bus and numerous close calls we arrive in Plakas a very small beach town tucked away behind some rather shaggy mountains in Southern Crete.

I have no idea where this youth hostel is where I am staying so I wander a bit and ask shop keepers until I find my way. I have notice that there are a lot of people of German decent here, which is especially ironic (isn't that a name of a pillar...no, that is ionic, or doric or something... ha ha) especially because of what happened in WWII. But then again millions of Americans go to Japan every year, more and more people are visiting Vietnam and heck, even Marc Specter went to Germany and ate pork sauage :) so I suppose it is not that big of a deal that Germans like to hang out here.

If the last Hostel I stayed in was the 90210 of Santorini, then this one would be the hippie commune of Crete. I am bunking with 9 other people here. There are no doors anywhere except for the bathrooms and showers. It is VERY laid back. Like something you'd find in some movie of a tropical paradise that a corporate executive would go after he grabbed his "manisfesto," the goldfish and his back pack saying "kiss my pooper-flap to corp. America..." ...hey wait a minute... uh, oh, mmmmm....maybe we should skip that... :)

It is very windy here!!

I am looking at the map and taking into consideration how much bus, ferry and airplane time was needed to get here and I am thiking I have a fuck of a long way to get back to Athens.

Hmmm, lets add this up:

4.5 hrs back to the sea port
4 hr ferry to Santorini
4 hr ferry to Athens
1 hr train/bus to Airport

Total time w/o "lay overs"

13 1/2 hours !!!!

hmmmm....I may stay here a bit longer.

Chris the hostel owner is a rather polite brit who has owned this hostel for about 12 years. He was an architect in England and hated it so he got pissed and quite.He says it was the best thing he ever did. Now he loves what he does and works like a madman (in a laid back Cretean way) for 7 months out of the year running this hostel and takes the rest of the year off. Most of the Creteans do the same. I guess the country pretty much shuts down from Nov. till April. Sounds like a good deal to me.

~Craig

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