Why Crete’s soul lies in its highlands

For Cretans, the real island is not to be found at the seaside. Neil McQuillian heads for the hills in search of authenticity

Life is agricultural, lived seasonally (ecoevents.gr)

Some people up here have never seen the ocean,” Kostas says as we enter a village called Apladiana. He points to its roadside name sign; it is pocked with bullet holes. “See that?” he says. “It tells people, ‘We have guns’.”

Toto and Kansas come to mind – yet we’re barely an hour’s leisurely drive inland from the beaches of northern Crete.

The rhythm of coastal Crete is dictated by the relentless thrum of waves and the ebb and flow of tourists. Down there, by the water’s edge, life is sweet. The sardines line themselves up on the grill and the karafa are glugged down in pleasantly self-deluding 0.5l denominations.  

Up here, things are different. The roads may not exactly be to nowhere, but not infrequently they wend their way to just one place. Life is agricultural, lived seasonally. Exerting their pull in the background are the twin poles of marriage and vendetta; both tend to feature gunfire. Local highlands for local people. Then… shouldn’t outsiders steer clear?

Not if you want to at least glimpse the Cretan soul. For Cretans (true Cretans, as those up here have it), disdain for the sea is in the blood. From Venetian to Turk, one waterbound invader after another has been confounded by resistance efforts emanating from the island’s interior. Historically, the sea means death, and life is lived with all guns blazing well out of its reach.  

“I will fight today.” Andreas – Kostas’ future father-in-law – bangs his fist into the table, his rosary beads forgotten in that instant. We’re at his home in the Mylopotamos region and I’ve just asked whether the readiness to resist lives on. Andreas is smiling, but he means it. When the island was occupied by the Nazis, his father joined the resistance (a fact he kept secret from his wife). “The whole village took an oath not to tell anyone if they were in the resistance,” says Kostas.

It was reading about Crete’s Second World War history that gave me the itch to explore the interior in the first place. Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Abducting a General recounts the author’s pivotal role in the 1944 kidnapping of General Kreipe, commander of the occupying German force. The Cretans’ intimate knowledge of mountain routes and cave hideouts – not to mention their fierceness – was key to the audacious plot’s success.  

The Cretan interior is immense. Mountains run from one end of the island to the other. At sunset, the peaks hang like dusty ghouls, ranged front and back. As you move along the coastal roads, it’s like watching so many photographic negatives being slowly rearranged, slotted first here then there.

But such is the spell cast by Crete’s seaside that few visitors – beyond hardened trekkers on the E4 path – break through the veil. Courtesy of Kostas, co-founder of the EcoEvents tour company, I was swiftly finding out what an oversight this is. Even the briefest of inland incursions reveal what Leigh Fermor fell in love with: a proud, brave, hospitable people with an uncommon connection to their surroundings and each other.

One large table in Andreas and his wife Eleni’s home is filled with family photos of all shapes and sizes. Beside it is a cabinet of little glasses and tumblers sitting on individual doilies. Over homemade raki – no burn, just warmth – and nibbles of cheese courtesy of the milk from Andreas’ 300-strong trip of goats, the talk turns to Kostas’ upcoming wedding to Marianna, Andreas and Eleni’s daughter.

Three to four thousand people will attend a wedding in the Cretan interior. Anything less than 1,500 guests is an embarrassment. Threads of community spread far and wide here, to which numbers like this are testament. I ask Kostas if he will know everyone at his wedding. “Someone will know them,” he replies with a laugh.

Eleni brings out “her other bible”, a large ledger whose edges prickle with variously coloured tabs. She opens it up, the pages ruffling easily apart thanks to all the deep Biro indentations. Chuckling, she flicks her hand at one page of meticulously written notes in faux exasperation.

“This is where she records the kaniskia and ‘favours’ they’ve given,” says Kostas. The kaniskia is the gift of a goat or sheep that you give to a close relative or friend ahead of their wedding. The animal will either be eaten at the wedding feast or used by the husband to start his life as a shepherd. The “favour” is the monetary gift that you give no matter how close you are to the couple. Factoring in what Andreas can make from selling one of his goats, he and Eleni take a hit of €5,000 to €6,000 a year on this kaniskia and “favours” system.  

But what you reap, you sow. “It’s like a loan going round the mountains. When you go to a wedding, you have to give exactly what they gave you. Too little and you look cheap. Too much and you make them look cheap.”  

Mountains run from one end of the island to the other. At sunset, the peaks hang like dusty ghouls, ranged front and back

Andreas slopes off and returns with a crystal decanter filled with a strong, aged, strawberry-coloured wine. Hospitality is a matter of honour in Crete’s highlands – and you don’t want to lose face. “The people here are taller, bigger,” says Kostas. “They’re like mountains. When they go down to Rethymno [the nearest town], you don’t mess with them.”

Indeed you don’t. One of the roles that marriages fulfil is to end what are sometimes decades-long vendettas between families. They can start for many reasons. “We don’t have judges; we have Saint George,” says Kostas. “We go to a monastery and stand in front of an image of the saint. If you swear in front of the image that you didn’t do whatever, I believe you. If you hesitate…”  

A shooting in May – sparked by a dispute over field boundaries – aroused fears that a vendetta would follow, but Kostas thinks not: “It was one person from each family.” In other words, they’re even.

Here’s the good news: Cretan gunfire is normally celebratory, and a wedding without it is unthinkable. Traditionally the shooting starts when the bride is collected from her home. “In Crete, you simply have to shoot. Actually, they call it ‘play’: you have to ‘play’. When my baby boy was born, he was given a Kalashnikov.” Kostas has even seen “play” with anti-aircraft-esque guns.

Fighting looms large in the Cretan psyche: “These people are less than 100 years free. Shooting is to remember, ‘We are warriors’.” The Cretan “wedding knife”, part of the traditional wedding ritual, has a V-shaped hilt to afford you better purchase when driving and twisting it into another man.

Along with the goats and the guns, weddings reinforce the mountains’ culture. Those kaniskia are roasted using a gruesome-looking method called adikristo, with the meat plastered onto a cage built around the open fire. Kostas gets misty-eyed when describing it. “You don’t need herbs when you cook Cretan goat,” he tells me. Free-roaming, the animals gorge themselves on the island’s natural flavourings (so much so that their bells are sometimes muffled by all the herbs that get caught in them).

In Crete, the easy coastal life is a commodity. It’s in the highlands that the island shows rather than sells you its soul.

All leisure travel is banned in England until 2 December when national lockdown lifts. 

Travel essentials

Getting there

Low-cost carriers fly to Crete from across the UK. Note the requirement to fill out a Passenger Locator Form ahead of travel.

Staying there

If you want a coastal base when exploring this region of northern Crete, Rethymno is the obvious choice. Camping Elizabeth just to the east of town has some fabulous glamping huts right in the dunes (€90). Around 20km east of Rethymno lies the cute harbour village of Panormos, where the waterfront Captain’s House has studios from €60. Inland, near the village of Margarites some 30km southeast of Rethymno, the stone-built Kouriton House offers atmospheric rooms from €60.

More information

Rethymno-based EcoEvents runs a variety of cultural and gastronomic tours in this area and across the island, with prices from €45 per person.