CRETE OCT 2015 - PT 2

The next day we went to the other archaeological site of the area, the Minoan palace of Phaestós dating from the 2nd and 3rd phases of the Minoan period, 1900-1700 and 1700-1450 BC. We were glad we had gone to Gortys first as this site was much more interesting and easy to imagine. It sits on a hill overlooking the fertile Messara valley, which must have financed it by the production of olives, wheat, grapes and other crops and fruits. The hire car problem meanwhile remained intractable, so from Phaestós we returned to Agia Galini by bus where we eventually obtained a little car for 48 hrs. In this we set off north into the Amari Valley, a rural bowl dotted with little white villages and remote churches overlooked by Mt Ida, at nearly 2,500 m the highest peak on the island (at left). You can visit a cave on its eastern slopes where Zeus was reputedly born, but we remained on the western side. We meandered about looking for somewhere to stay and eventually came to the Aravanes hotel in the little village of Thronos at the north end of the valley. On arrival I found an oldish man sitting outside shelling walnuts, whom I asked for directions. He turned out to be the owner and on closer acquaintance proved a charming and cultured man who made us very welcome. We shared our table on the first night with a French couple and on the second with our host and two Norwegian women and the Swedish husband of one of them. We explored the valley during the day visiting various villages, in one of which we had our only experience of a rather grasping restaurateuse. We will not be returning to Gerakari. We also found an abandoned monastery which served for a few years as an agricultural college but is now falling down; the church however was perfectly kept. And we went for a beautiful walk down a limestone gorge with a shrine now devoted to St Anthony, but which has been a place of worship since long before christianity. We duly returned the car to Agia Galini on the following day. We had a long wait for the bus so I walked an hour along the coast to the little village of Agios Georgios (St George) and back, while Magda went to the beach and round the town. Our bus deposited us in Rethimnon, another Venetian port in the centre of the north coast. Again Venetian buildings, walls and mole set the tone but there were also a few mosques. We stayed in a “boutique” hotel – a bit above our normal price range but very nice apart from the mozzies… We dined in a restaurant with live music played by a couple of students who, while technically quite competent, lacked spirit. No one danced, so we went back to bed. On our last full day the south wind was blowing hard up from Africa, sprinkling the island with Sahara dust. I did a good walk up into the hills just inland to a couple of pretty little villages, and passed by Crete’s only fresh water lake, Kournas. I had lunch in a little taverna in the tiny village of Kastellos. When I opened the door, sweaty and wind-blown, the eyes of the “waitress” – the owner’s 14-year-old daughter – opened wide in surprise, but after that she looked after me very well, practising her school English. I was the only non-Greek in the place. Our last night in Chaniá was spent in another restaurant with live music – very professional – and we were able to dance a bit. We found ourselves next to a Brit in his 80s who has lived in Western Australia for 40 years where he became a Greek Dance instructor!

CRETE OCT 2015 - PT 1

We flew to Crete on 2nd Oct for 10 days. I had sailed into Heraklion in 1980 and visited Knossos, but knew little more about the island. I learnt a little Greek, but the whole tourist industry speaks English more or less competently, so I seldom had a real conversation where I had to communicate in Greek! Crete’s history has been one of foreign occupation for most of the past 2000 years. It was the cradle of the first known major civilization on European soil, the Minoan, between approximately 3000 BC and 1450 BC. It was then incorporated into first Dorian and then Hellenistic Greece until conquered by the Romans in 67 BC. On the fall of the Western Empire in the C5th it passed into the hands of the Byzantine Empire (with a century in Arab hands 824-961 AD) until conquered by the Venetians in 1204. They held the island until it was wrested from them by the Turks in the mid C17th. The rest of Greece threw off Turkish rule in 1821, but in Crete the occupiers hung on until 1898, when the island became independent for a few years before it was united with the rest of Greece in 1908. It was held by the German army from 1941 until 1944 when most of the island was liberated. The German garrison in Chaniá held out until May 1945. We started with a couple of days in Chaniá in the NW corner. It was an important Venetian fortified harbour as the city’s fabric bears witness, although a few mosques and other vestiges of Turkish rule remain. There is a Venetian mole with a lighthouse, a big “bastion”, city walls, the governor’s palace, monastery, shipyards, etc. We stayed in a little hotel with a view over the harbour and found the Greeks charming and friendly almost without exception. The city boasts a fine orthodox cathedral, an architectural museum (in part of an old Franciscan monastery) with a fascinating collection of coins, and a naval museum with a model of the Battle of Salamis, inter alia. Naturally we looked for places to dance, although on the whole our stay was disappointing in that respect. On the first evening we set out for a long and fruitless walk round the town looking for places where we were assured there would be dancing. On our return, by mere chance we found a bar immediately opposite our hotel (across a street less than 3 metres wide) with live music – a laouto (Greek lute) and a guitar. The building had no roof, but with the warm weather that did not matter. A group of about 15 people, apparently an end-of-season office party, came in and before long they were on their feet. Magda joined in one dance, but we were so tired (having got up at 3 a.m. for our flight) that we did not stay for more. The next day we explored Souda, the modern port in the outskirts. As we were having lunch the guitar player from the previous evening came past so we stopped him for a chat. He said that they were playing again that evening, which was the bar’s closing night of the season. So we went. This time there were three musicians: our friend, now playing the laouta, another playing the oud (a similar but older lute-like instrument) and a third the lira – a sort of three-stringed viella or treble viola played on the knee. It is a typical instrument of Greek folk-music. No one danced! Our next visit was to Elos, a tiny village in the mountains of western Crete famed for its chestnut festival. There was not much going on but we walked up into the hills among the chestnut trees and found 3 or 4 delightful, tiny country churches. As we came out of the tiniest of the three, a local farmer appeared with basket of little ripe figs and offered us a couple each. Here my Greek was put to its first serious test! In the village there was a wood-carver with a Mexican flag outside his shop; he explained that there were so many imported Chinese products in Greece that he refused to be Greek until Greece recovered its self-respect. On Monday we left Chaniá on the 9 a.m. bus for Plakias on the south coast to meet up with Nicholas, an English friend from Chile. He lived in Crete many years ago, owning a sailing boat and a donkey! I went for a couple of good walks in the mountains while Magda spent time on the beach. We had supper in a little place looking over the bay and ate snails as we watched the sun set. In restaurants you only order the starters and/or main dish (a couple of starters are often sufficient) and wine or beer. Clean tap-water is almost always available and when you order your bill they bring you a small portion of sweet pastry or fruit and yoghurt, and a little decanter of rakis – like Italian grappa. It is advisable not to finish the decanter, even between two of you! From there we headed east, changing buses in the old-established tourist resort of Agia Galini with its big, smart hotels. We arrived for the night in the commercial city of Mirés, hoping to find a B&B and a hire car. We found neither! Magda went exploring and entered a little restaurant where she explained our problem. Of course – said Ireni behind the counter – we have a friend with a little apartment to let, my sister will drive you there! And so it was all fixed up in a trice. As soon as we had settled in we took the bus a few miles east to the archaeological site of Gortys, which was the Roman capital of Crete and an important city. There was a 6th century church of St Titus (undergoing restoration) and a fairly well-preserved theatre. The rest was pretty much heaps of loose stones which reminded me of Easter Island! There was another theatre more or less excavated and recognizable, a forum and some temples, but nothing very easy to visualise. The most evocative sight was an olive tree, estimated to be over 1,600 years old, embracing a piece of Roman pillar! We returned for dinner – the only customers – at our friendly restaurant where Ireni’s mother Margarita did the cooking. She was one of the last 10 on the Masterchef competition for Greece and in the past has worked as a cook for various VIPs. We ate very well, then Ireni put on some music and the four of us did a couple of dances. It was a delightful evening.

FOOTNOTE

And so back for 2 nights in Havana, where we stayed in the delightful Florida hotel – a touch of luxury after 3 weeks of casas particulares – to ruminate and recover. I had my hair cut by an ex NCO of the Cuban intelligence services. Magda bought presents for everyone she could think of. I bought a biography of José Martí. We went to a performance by a group that claimed to be the Buena Vista Social Club – there were two who were old enough to have been in the original group! We had an entertaining evening however, and when the singer went round the tables to get people to join in we found out that the family at the next table were from… CHILE! In all, a country of contradictions with much that is admirable marred by the bureaucracy and economic/administrative ineptitude which tend to mark obsessively socialist states. A people yearning for more freedom to do things and manage their own lives, but with expectations of the end of the embargo which are likely to be disappointed. If they want to enter the real world and receive all the goodies available in other countries then they must work to produce and export in order to earn exchange with which to pay for them. It would be sad indeed if the beautiful dream of Castro’s Cuba should be handed over to capitalist investors to do as they please. There is a will to resist that fate, but it will take an astute and determined leadership. The big question is: who will replace Raúl Castro when he retires in 2016? To close, a selection of scenes from Havana:

BAY OF PIGS

And so to our last call, Playa Larga on the “Bahía de Cochinos” – Bay of Pigs. After Fidel took power in 1959, the US – which had maintained a series of puppet governments since independence in 1898 – determined not to lose its grip on Cuba and arranged an invasion in a bid to overthrow the Revolution. Some 1,500 dissatisfied Cuban refugees were trained by the CIA in Guatemala and shipped to the south coast of Cuba for an opposed landing. The raids to take out the Cuban air force on the ground the previous day were a failure, and after the “mercenaries” – as they are called in Cuba – had disembarked the ships were sunk by Cuban planes and gunfire from the shore – Russian self-propelled guns. Fidel himself scored a hit with one, which we saw in the Museum of the Revolution. The bedraggled invaders quickly saw that the game was up. A small number were killed and the rest were taken prisoner and eventually returned to the US in exchange for food and medicines. This event led directly on to the Cuban missile crisis, however Fidel was out of his league at this level of power politics! The Russians offered him nuclear missiles to protect the island, which he accepted, but Kruschev had another programme! When the US protested at the delivery of the missiles and blockaded the island, the Russians “backed down” and negotiated an exchange with the US, getting exactly what they wanted. They would withdraw the missiles from Cuba if the US would withdraw their nuclear missiles from Turkey. Fidel – who had his own shopping list which included an end to the embargo and the closure of the Guantanamo Bay base – was not invited to the negotiations and left hopping mad! I did two dives and saw two of the small boats in which the invaders came ashore, sunk in shallow water. Playa Larga (Long Beach) was one of the two landing sites. Today it is a little fishing village in the throes of becoming a tourism centre – every second house was a casa particular, some serving good food. It is just next to the Cienaga swamp – at nearly half a million hectares the biggest swamp in the Caribbean and a paradise for birds, including flamingos. It is also a national park and a Ramsar site. I did 2 bird-watching trips, seeing the tiny bee humming-bird in someone’s back garden. Also a Cuban black hawk and lots of water birds. Magda meanwhile enjoyed the beach… Cake delivery!!!!!!

CIENFUEGOS

Ciefuegos was founded in 1820 by a French émigré from New Orleans, Louis de Clouet, at a time when the Spanish government was seeking to increase the white population of the island. De Clouet proposed to the then Captain General, José Cienfuegos, that he should found and populate a city on the bay of Jagua with colonists from Bordeaux, New Orleans and Philadelphia. The city quickly became capital of an important sugar-producing zone and to this day has an aura of prosperity, if not wealth. The port on the huge bay of Jagua – an excellent hurricane refuge – also holds Cuba’s oil refinery, as well as ship-building and other industries. The city’s lay-out is spacious, with broad streets (on the traditional grid pattern) and a huge main square covering 2 blocks and overlooked by the cathedral (undergoing repairs…). Again we were in a 19th century casa particular, with double double doors like those of the house of 100 doors! – and a rooftop balcony on which to drink Leonor’s famous mojitos (our hostess)! She and her charming husband Armando (both in their 80s) have run the house as a casa particular for 15 years – it must have been one of the first. She inherited it from her parents and proudly told us that she had changed nothing! A feature of the city is the Tomas Terry Theatre on the square, built in 1889 with the money of Venezuelan capitalist Tomas Terry – who however did not live to see it completed. It has a rich programme of plays, opera etc. and has resounded to the voices of Caruso and Anna Pavlova, among many others. It is kept in excellent condition, almost as it was when it was built. The following day we took a trip up to the mountains – actually the western end of the same massif that I was in at Topes de Collantes. We walked up to see a waterfall, and Magda took the photo of the trogon! On the way down we stopped at the Cienfuegos Botanical Gardens, now run by the state. It was originally formed in the late 19th century by an American sugar magnate to develop new varieties of sugar cane. It now holds a large collection of mainly exotic trees – including a large number of different types of palm tree. There was also a brazil nut tree with its extraordinary bee-hive-shaped seed pod! Our driver was an engineer who had given up professional work to become a taxi driver. Both his children are at university. Cuban universities are free and high quality. In some areas such as medicine they are as good as in any developed country. Entry is strictly by merit. The aspiration to increase the number of graduates in society – now around 50% – has the disadvantage that very few people want to work the land. This is not a problem in a country like USA or England, where agriculture is highly mechanised and efficient. But in Cuba it has been one of the factors which has made the island unable to feed itself. Another factor is that since agricultural reform in the 1960s no one is allowed to own more than about 40 hectares of land. The government took over about half the island’s land in 1959, mainly sugar estates which it continues to run. All other estates were split up. As a result much of the land has been abandoned and large tracts invaded by an introduced thorn called marabou; and Cuba, with rich soil and an enviable climate, is dependent on imports for food. The only serious production crop continues to be sugar which was bought by the Russians for political reasons until 1989. When the Iron Curtain came down, the bail-outs stopped and the country entered on the “Special period” when it virtually starved for 10 years. It was Hugo Chavez who extended a lifeline when he came to power… China now purchases Cuban sugar – who am I to say whether for political reasons?!

TRINIDAD

On the road to Trinidad (1951 Chevrolet) we passed our Norwegian friends – bicycling! – with the bus following behind like the “kits and capes” truck. Cuba is a very good place for bicycling – much of it is flat and there is little traffic. And it’s not too hard to avoid the potholes… On arrival the owner of our casa particular was waiting for us at the entrance to the town and led us in on his motor-bike. There is a lot of poaching of tourists between casas particulares and the touts can be troublesome. Trinidad is indeed a pretty town – also undergoing its own restoration programme. Lots of 18th century buildings… but full of tourists. The Casa de la Trova we found rather sleepy, but the Casa de la Música – with an open-air stage on the wide steps climbing up beside the church – was more lively. Having done our tourist duty the first day, on the second Magda headed for the beach while I went on a hike in a nearby park – Topes de Collantes. The group consisted of a Swiss woman and a young Danish couple. The guide was reasonably well-informed but weak on birds, so my bird-book came in handy. We saw the Cuban trogon – Cuba’s national bird because of its red, white and blue colouring (Magda’s photo from a later day) – a Cuban tody and lots of North American warblers. And of course the Cuban emerald humming-bird. We bathed in a natural pool below a waterfall – the water was surprisingly cold. The region (and much of the island – like Jamaica lying just south) is mainly limestone and there were some interesting formations. Afterwards we had lunch in a restaurant in the park. The menu – as everywhere in Cuba – offered chicken, pork and fish… Trinidad was the centre of the Cuban sugar industry in the 18th century, and production continued during the 19th and 20th centuries even though it lost its pride of place to Cienfuegos (next blog). Just outside is the so-called valley of the sugar mills where you can take a ride in a tourist steam train – but we didn’t have time! We saw the slightly more modest house of the owner of the House of 100 doors – apparently he went there only to work.

SANCTI SPIRITUS

Our next destination was the 18th century town of Trinidad on the south coast, but we stopped on the way in Sancti Spiritus, less known but also with some splendid architecture, especially around the main square. A horse and trap took us into the town centre where the owners of the casa particular which we had booked passed us onto their sister-in-law. We are getting quite used to this sort of arrangement! Our first step was to have lunch in a large restaurant on the little “square” – a rough trapezium – that was the original town centre, with a pretty blue church! Nearby an 18th century bridge crosses the river, approached by cobbled streets. The next door table contained a bus-load of elderly Norwegians (the bus was outside, with flag!) and we had trouble convincing the waiters that we spoke Spanish – always a bad sign! Outside we returned to sight-seeing, visiting the “House of 100 doors” – now a cultural museum. It was a large corner-house belonging to a 19th century sugar baron! We later saw one of his other houses in Trinidad where the mill was located. It was full of a collection of beautiful furniture and artefacts and had the typical lay-out of Cuban houses: from the street you enter the Sala – a drawing room to receive guests and visitors in a formal atmosphere. Behind the Sala, separated by a wall in smart houses like this, but in many cases just by two sofas or rows of chairs back-to-back, is the Saleta, for the family and more intimate friends – it now often contains the television (when there is one!). Behind this again there is a courtyard taking up about half the width of the house, and looking onto it the 2 to 4 bedrooms, usually leading off a gallery but also, at least in old houses, interconnected. At the back is the kitchen – and possibly a dining room. In this case there was a music room with old instruments, including a piano carried on the backs of servants from the port at Trinidad 60 km away. When it arrived the daughter of the house went into a pet and refused to play it – we were told this story by our guide and the revolutionary reasoning is not hard to fathom! After the revolution the house was requisitioned by the state, but the owners apparently accepted the inevitable and gave it up with good grace because they were allowed to keep a couple of rooms on the second floor at the back, where the descendants still live! And the 100 doors? Well, I didn’t count them, but all the internal doors are double and double! Each doorway contains a pair of full-length doors for privacy, and also a pair of screen-like half-height doors to allow air to circulate when extreme privacy is not required. In the evening we went out for our mojito in the hotel on the square where there was live music – and bumped into the Norwegians again. The next day we visited a magnificent library, built around 1910 by a society of worthies.

CAMAGÜEY

What a pleasure to reach Camagüey and return to the delightful, friendly Cuba of the tourist brochures! Our casa was on the first floor of a 19th century house in the city centre and served excellent dinners. It also had a magnificent roof-top terrace for sun-downers. Street scenes in the centre: The city is about as far from the sea as you can get in the island and is famed for its dance group and “orchestra”. We went to a show in the modernised 19th century theatre. The event started with the award of a long service and good conduct medal or equivalent to the oldest employee – an electrician. The orchestra turned out to be a wind band nearly fifty strong – a dozen clarinets and as many flutes, a long row of brass – including saxophones, a strong percussion section, and – inevitably – a double-bass! The conductor was also the artistic director of the dance group and responsible for the musical arrangements. He directed the whole with great gusto! On Sunday we set out to find the Casa de la Trova for a musical lunch – and found ourselves in a party! A charming gentleman celebrating his 70th birthday. He made us very much at home and chatted with us although he had about 20 guests to attend to. People kept arriving with more and more food and drink – as the Casa is a State “business”, no one minded. Before long we found ourselves dancing, and Magda’s lesson in Holguín paid dividends as we counted 1, 2, 3,… 5, 6, 7,…! At 3 o’clock the Casa de la Trova closed and the whole party moved 100 m down the street to the Arts and Culture Association, where the live music (and the beer and rum) continued until 5.00 p.m. Then there was a break – which we used to have a shower and supper – before we stalwarts (down to a group of about 10) reassembled in a bar on the main street at 7.00 p.m. and danced till 9. At that point we bowed out, but the others were set to go back to the Casa de la Trova where the music was due to start again at 10.00!