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The Ten Percent Solution A dog skipped along with us for about five kilometers. We finally lost him by pedaling speedily down a hill. Sitia was a port crouched in the shelter of a mountain. Wonderful boat reflections wavered in the nearly motionless water. We leaned our bikes against a concrete retaining wall and I went to take a picture. Three guys came walking along. One guy started whistling and yelling. He was yelling so loudly I thought he was trying to get someone's attention on the other side of the street, but I finally realized he was yelling at Sharon when I deciphered: "No good bikes there!" I had no idea why, but we moved them anyway. That was the first time we felt treated shabbily. The Greeks were usually so laid back nothing seemed to bother them. It was a grueling climb across the island. A day of endless ten percent grade signs. I was sure the highway department simply made up a whole truckload of signs reading ten percent and every time they came to a steep hill they stuck one of those signs in the ground. No matter how steep the gradient every single hill said ten percent. Maybe there was a sale on ten percent signs. Maybe they got them for ten percent off. Approaching from a distance I would spy a sign and say to Sharon "Bet ya it says ten percent." The Greeks probably didn't care what the percentage said. "Close enough," I was sure they would say. Despite the nineteen degree Celsius temperature, all my clothes were required and my toes were numb on the way down. We rode up more mountains before reaching the quaint beach of Vái at the extreme east end of Crete. With palm trees in the background, a guy took topless pictures of two models. Welcome to Vái. Vái was like a banana plantation with date palms and beaches. There wasn't much else. Mostly rock. We thought we could camp by the palms but there was a No Camping sign. Instead we found a sheltered cove on a section of beach near a Minoan archeological site. We couldn't hear anything except the tide. We didn't have much drinking water. I decided to use sea water to make out pasta. I stood out on a rock to get away from the sand and floating particles close to shore, then had difficulty getting back. Waves kept splashing way up and I didn't want to get my shoes wet. Boy, was that pasta salty! |
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