Day 80; June 23
I spent much of the day Monday getting up to and then around the Lasithi Plateau, which was a pretty special place.
Road Signs
I mentioned the road sign system recently, and here’s a double example:
I’ve been trying very hard to just read from the top line in each case, just as a way to get more used to operating here in Crete.
Sometimes it’s pretty confusing, as the Greek letter Ξ can be a Z sound, an X sound, or a CH sound, or even a kind of Norwegian throat-clearing H sound, but the letters are usually a lot more straight-forward than that, even if they have an odd look to them.
And there’s a clue about pronunciation that does not exist at all in Turkish or English: the accented syllable’s vowel has an accent mark over it.
Even Older Than Me!
On the way up (here’s a view of the coast back behind me to the north-east; I especially liked the look of the islands in the light)
I saw this old (trust me on this one) woodcarver who had a little display case of pretty poorly carved wooden spoons, which I really don’t need, but I did get a set of salad grabbers from him that looked a lot more polished and finished than his spoons did, so I figured he made the spoons himself and got the salad grabbers from a local source where they pound them out in a factory.
But the sign next to his stool, which was next to pile of shavings, said he was
107 years old, and even if he wasn’t, he looked it. He was 40 when I was born, which puts him being born when Teddy Roosevelt was president— the year before the Wright Brothers changed the world . . . .
And the sign could well be a year or two old itself. . . .
And I’m guessing this was his wife, who was very sweet, but she could have been his mother.
She gave me an orange,
which I ate later, and here she is about to hand me the salad tongs I bought.
And here’s the two of them in front of the spoon cabinet.
More Linens— But I Was Strong!
Up on the plateau I stopped in a town to check the place out and shot some of the standard Cretan table runners they all sell up here.
The goat-like animal (the main design element) is a kri-kri, the wild goat of Crete (that also show up in the old cave art from here) as well as standard flower motifs and some tree-of-life designs.
As you see, the designs are pretty standard, but the colors shift a little. And some of these are reversible.
California Dreamin’
This guy owned the local restaurant— I thought when I first saw him that he looked more Californian than Cretan and I learned he’d worked as a Merchant Mariner all up and down the American coastal ports, mostly running to South America and back.
Dancing Around the High Plateau
The Lasithi Plateau is inland about 25 Km from the north coast, and 40 Km or so from the town (Agios Nikolaos) where I stayed over the weekend.
It’s where the surviving Minoans hid out and preserved their culture when the Dorians moved onto the island.
I headed out pretty early, avoiding the new national four-lane road and staying on the old roads all the way.
There were lots of little villages on the way up into the plateau, and then lots of them around the outer edge of the plateau when I got there.
Some pretty typical village scenes ---
And this goat didn’t have a chance dealing with its very determined owner. . . .
Plateau Geography
Think of a coffee cup about 15 Km or so across, with the level of the coffee about 4/5 of the way up the cup.
Now change the cup to a ring of hills, and the level of the liquid to really flat farmland, growing wheat, goats, and potatoes.
Historically, there were about 20,000 windmills up here to move the water around but only a few of them remain,
mostly in front of tavernas and restaurants, although I did find one that was pulling water up into a big cement trough, which then headed, via PVC pipelines, out into the fields, where there was a lot of drip irrigation.
It’s about 50 Km around the perimeter of the ring road, and (of course) I wound up doing about 2.5 laps.
Chasing the Rice Truck
As I was going through the villages there was a guy in a loud-speaker truck selling rice and wheat around the circuit, and I must have seen him about a dozen different places, but I may well have put more miles in up there than he did.
Goat Central
So as you will already have realized from last night’s frantic e-mail, I wound up with way too much goat hair, as I thought I knew someone who could turn it into yarn, although I don’t really have anything I want to have knitted for me. . . .
But even before I realized all that, I was kind of listless up there— I mean it was pretty but I just wasn’t fully engaged, so I invented a quest: I decided to try and track down a bunch of goat hair by just pulling over to the side of the road when I saw people, especially the old black-dress grandmothers, more to meet them and have an adventure than to get the goat hair.
So I started in asking people and getting sent up to the next village and then asking again. . . .
And I finally hit this restaurant I’d been directed to and visited with the woman who ran it and she said she had a farm and had goat hair and it would be at a very reasonable cost (it was eventually for free) and don’t you think you’ll want at least 10 kilos worth (22 pounds!!!).
Her husband was working at the farm and wasn’t available for a couple of hours, so I took off, completed the circuit around the plateau, went to the open-air museum (and visited with the old woman weaving on an even older loom all about goat hair), hit the local natural history museum, finished the total circuit (so I’m now on the second full lap), and went back to the restaurant.
You Sure There’ll Be Enough Goat Hair?
Her son guided me to the farm, calmed the killer dogs lunging out to the ends of their chains to greet me, and then we hit the open-air goat-hair warehouse.
There were about eight or ten really big gunny-sacks lying about, stuffed full of goat hair (and other natural goat products), standing about 4.5 feet tall and a couple of feet across each.
And the kid seemed kind of miffed that I only wanted less than half of one of the bags.
And it was also pretty clear that the other natural goat products added some real punch to the goat-hair experience (especially this AM when I went out to the car, where the goat hair had been in the hatch-back all night). There was a true, rural Crete piquancy to the car this AM. . . . . and it was neither oregano nor sage. . . .
So I went bombing back to the open-air museum hoping the old weaver was there so I could ask her about how to wash and dry the damn stuff. I mean, I know what wet dogs smell like. . . .
And I got the Goat Hair Washing 101 outline, and headed out of the valley—
All the previous travel was counter-clockwise, but after leaving the open-air museum, I headed clockwise up to one of the three exit roads. Most tourists up there hit only part of the loop, as they come in one place and go out another, but very few are as thorough as I am, logging about two-and-a-half full laps before I escaped up over the rim of the hills and down into the coast.
Heading Back to the North Coast
I saw these old windmills up on the rim of the plateau and thought they were worth some climbing around.
I’m going to play with these in Black and White when I get home.
And just so the whole story gets told, I sent out the e-mail last night, and this AM went through all the responses and no one I know even knows any spinners— quilters, yes; spinners no.
I did get one e-mail from a close friend of almost 30 years who said that if I was driving around Crete looking for goat hair for spinners and weavers I didn’t even know, that maybe, just maybe, it was time to think about coming home.
So I found a place this noon to get rid of the goat hair. But it was a great adventure and a terrific way to energize yesterday up there, dancing the goat-hair dance on the high plateau.
Postal Excesses
At home, going postal has one sense— here it’s quite different.
I had a couple of liquor boxes worth of table linens and stuff like that to ship home, and since they weighed only about 7 kilos total, and the 40-kilo gym bag cost me about $140 or so to ship home, I figured that these two would be a real bargain.
Not the case.
I was reminded of friends’ complaints that framing my photographs cost more than the photograph itself, and I’m having the same experience at the post office today.
The two little packages cost €91 to ship, so I’m guessing that anything over 6 ounces costs a bundle regardless of weight, and then there’s a sliding scale based on weight. I’m guessing that the first pound (half-kilo) cost about $50 or so, and that’s some spicy meat ball.
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