The Journey

“Keep asking and you’ll find the city,” they say.
And it’s true.

When you’re looking for a certain road, neither a map nor a sign will help you.

So, you keep stopping at kiosks or coffeehouses and you ask. Then, you combine all the things that people told you, you get a “central idea” and then you find your road – most of the times…
The worst scenario is to get lost, but again, for how long can you be lost? In the next village you’ll ask again and you’ll find the right way.

  That’s almost what had happened in my very first road trip.

To tell you the truth, I was very excited that I was going on the road with no specific destination, just where it would lead…

So, on the first day, the road led me east, to Agios Nikolaos and Elounda. At that time, it dawned on me that I should visit the village of Plaka, and the small island of Spinalonga – the former island of the lepers – situated directly across from the village.

Spinalonga as seen from Plaka

I had recently read the book The Island, by Victoria Hislop, and I wanted to get a closer look at what I had read.
Besides, I was born and raised in Crete. It is unacceptable to “see” a local spot through a book that an English woman wrote, but never to have been there to actually see it for my self, right?

   Anyway, after about a thousand stops in order to find the “right way,” I managed to arrive in Plaka around six o’clock in the afternoon, when darkness – in slow motion – started to cover everything.

I just made it to see Spinalonga across the sea and then the small island got lost in blackness. And Plaka seemed so small and empty that I had to go back and forth twice in order to make sure that that was all of it . . . and there wasn’t anymore I might have missed.

I stopped in the only place that was open – something between a coffeehouse and a tavern – and asked if there were any boats that take people to the island.
They answered that no, there weren’t any.

Not even for me, a visitor that happened to stop by?

No.

No exceptions, especially since the weather was so marvelous?

No . . . not until April, when the tourist season starts.

So, my plans for spending the night in Plaka, and traveling the next day to the island across, collapsed just like that.

I left greatly disappointed, knowing that everyone in that village was staring at me behind the blinds of their windows. I know Crete well enough, so I can say that when a “stranger” gets into a small village, everyone is curious as to whom it is and what does he or she want.

I left knowing that I am not going to visit Plaka in the near future. I am an impulsive person. That day, the road brought me to Agios Nikolaos, and then I decided to go to Elounda and after that, I got the idea to visit Plaka. One followed the other. If I had planned a week ago to visit Plaka and Spinalonga, most likely I would have never made the trip. I mean, when I make plans, something always happens to make them not come true.

On the other hand, if I do something impulsively, there is always the imponderable factor of not finding things as expected. So, who knows? If I knew that there were no boats until April, would I have visited Plaka and seen Spinalonga, at least from across the sea?
Probably not.

And at that time, I realized that “what’s worth it is the trip”. Why? Because no destination on Earth will ever be what you expect to find. No destination, nowhere, not ever. So, the only thing you have to do is to make the journey!

 Plaka – a winter ghost town