Enter Hania, my favourite place in Crete - winding alleyways with funky little cafes, art galleries and creperies around every corner, cobbled streets, museums and historical buildings, a quaint old Venetian harbour that used to be able to be closed from hostile vessels with a giant chain across the entrance.

This is the sort of town that you could eat every meal at a different place for weeks, and then want to re-visit each spot to catch up with the chef and try everything else that they offer. My favourite spot was sitting on a bench on the waterfront either (a) early in the morning watching the sun rise over the sea wall and seeing the shopkeepers casually open up for the day, chatting and fishing as if they didn’t need customers that day, or (b) late at night, when the days heat has left, and people fill the waterfront walkways talking and laughing, and enjoying a glass of wine or one of the many desserts on offer (my sweet of choice was a crepe with gelato, banana, amaretto, honey, and nuts).

Other highlights from our time in Crete include:

• Spinalonga Island: This Venetian Fortress (those guys knew how to protect a city) turned Leper Colony has been kept in the same condition as it was when the last members of the colony left in the early 50’s (when leprosy turned out to be a simple bacterial infection, and treatment became readily available).
• Sfakia: Southern coast port town where the Allied troops evacuated from in WWII, and which remained a resistance stronghold throughout the war. It had also been a centre for resistance against both the occupying Venetians and Turks, who legendary leader Daskalogiannis gave himself up to in order to save his men (he became legendary not just because of his leadership, but because he was skinned alive, and he suffered this in “dignified silence” - these guys are tough!).
• Samaria Gorge: Europe’s longest Gorge, and one of it’s most famous. A 15km hike down through forest and alongside rocky rivers was a welcome change to the barren terrain that dominates the Med. And the sea at the end was the perfect answer to the 35 degree heat.
• Meeting our new Canadian friend Tristan - a medical student from Vancouver that we managed to convince to come to Hania, then the gorge, then Sfakia too, with us. We shared plenty of laughs, wine, and crepes, and look forward to catching up when we make it to Vancouver.

Pics: Beers at sunset on the sea wall, and crepes at sunrise

Proud to be a Kiwi

Despite our enviable "greenness", reputation for friendliness, rich Maori culture and excellent offerings in contemporary music, being surrounded by literally thousands of years of rich history that stretches in every direction for thousands of miles makes being Kiwi feel a bit plain at times. Though maybe that‘s why everyone seems to think that we‘re so nice - we don‘t have millennia of grudges to hold against all our neighbours (just the Aussies).

But if this relative lack of history was manifesting itself as a lack of national identity or pride, it was remedied by our time in Crete. Visiting museums, and more importantly, talking to the old men at the cafes in the streets, made us realise just how important our grandfathers(and, by extension, their families) were to these people. Kiwi soldiers fought and died for Cretans, and those who didn’t get off the island before the Germans took control were hidden by local families despite German death threats - some for up to 3 years.

Mountain villages have memorial plaques for “all the males within 1km of the village square, who were executed on German orders as reprisals” for a string of offences. These included:

Hiding allied soldiers

Hiding (and being) resistance fighters

Assisting resistance fighters in kidnapping the German General in charge of Crete (this story was retold with laughter by the old men who we met by the busstop - more on them later, as they deserve a blog post all to themselves)

The curator for the Battle of Crete exhibition at the museum talked to us for a good twenty minutes about New Zealand’s contribution, and shared stories of family members of soldiers who have come to the exhibition. It seems that Kiwis have a special place in his heart, as he went into a backroom to get me a piece of memorabilia to take home with me.

As we go along we learn first-hand (and are humbled by) the identity and reputation that has been earned on our behalf, and often wonder how our generation would respond to similar crises.

The Ruined Ruins of Knossos

We’re no archaeologists, but in the last 2 months we’ve seen a fair few ruins of ancient civilisations. We’ve seen museums dedicated to ancient cities, we’ve been to excavation sites, and walked on the same marble streets as the Persian King Darius, Alexander the Great, numerous Roman Emperors, and many, many more. But we’re still just naïve travellers.

So when we visited the famous ruins of Knossos, in Crete, and found concrete steps, a bright red painting of a bull on a wall, and poured concrete columns, scepticism more than crept into our minds. It turns out that Arthur Evans, a wealthy English “self-taught archaeologist” had bought the site less than a century ago, excavated it, and built structures upon it to make what he thought it might have looked like thousands of years ago. He even decided that it was a totally different civilisation from any other "discovered" at the time, so coined the term Minoan.

While hundreds of people snapped photos and queued to look at the fake “artifacts”, our healthy Gen-Y cynicism kicked in more and more as we read the signs stating what “Arthur Evans believed to have been on this site”.

I generally try not to be too negative or to seem ungrateful(most of the time), so the big positive from visiting Arthur’s Minoan Fantasy Land and reading the “Ruins for Dummies, by Dummies” information boards, was an enhanced appreciation for the all the other places in the world that have been painstakingly preserved and restored.

They Play With Their Hearts

If Travel is does one thing, it slaps you in the face and says “look at how big this world is, and see how little you know about it, and the insignificance of you and everything that you know”.

But as the shock subsides, Travel calms you with a bit of salve, softening it’s voice and pointing out how although the world is vast, the people everywhere are, well, people - they just have their little twists on how things are seen and done, and you have a familiar feeling when Travel’s comforting voice says, “See? Same same, but different!”

Travel was with us as we sat in a café in Heraklion (capital of Crete) watching Germany play Argentina in the Football World Cup. The best source of entertainment wasn’t watching the game - it was watching the people watching the game.

Tables full of Argentineans had blue and white scarves, flags, and shirts in their hands, and at the slightest sign that the ball might be within range of the goal, the blue and white would start to wind up. The people would inch closer to the edges of their seats, and drinks would be set down in preparation for jumping, singing and dancing.

The Germans (just two of them) wore full Adidas tracksuits, and sat in front of us, stoney faced and rigid, even as their strikers took shots at the Argy goal.

Until the ball hit the back of the net.

The screen disappeared, replaced by two white tracksuits bouncing up and down (retaining their rigidity by moving somehow…mechanically) and shouting “Ya! Ya! Ya! Ya! Ya!”, before a quick and awkward ManHug, and a look around to realise that they were surrounded by sulky Latin Americans. Then the stony faces returned until the next goal.

This made me wonder what people thought of our own Kiwi “twist” a couple of days earlier, when Emma and I convinced a bar owner to change one of his five big screen TVs from the Italy/Slovakia game to watch the All Whites play Paraguay. We sat down, sank into our chairs and chilled out with a beer, watching calmly (except for those parts where a seat just doesn’t seem necessary) as our boys did NZ proud. We didn’t sing or dance, had no flags, tshirts or face paint, and didn’t shout “Ya!” at any point. But we did manage to get a table of Americans behind us to root for the Kiwis, which was an achievement since none of them really liked “soccer”.

But it was when we ordered our gyros (think cheap kebab/rolled pita, but Greek) for dinner that night, and the chef found out that we were Kiwis, that we felt like we were a significant part of this big world. He told us that although our team wouldn’t win, that they “play with…so much heart”.

We walked away a little bit taller, feeling same same, but different in a very good way.

[Full credit to the All Whites]

Into the Islands

Turkey is an amazing country, but it was time for us to leave and I couldn’t wait to get into the Greek Islands. Our first stop was Rhodes (or Rhodos to the Turks, who share the history just as much as the Greeks). The city that started with a small Venetian fort where the citizens would hide in when under seige and grew into one of the most formidable Venetian fortresses (the city was built as a fortress, with priority given to holding off attackers with 12 metre thick walls and seige weapons, rather than anything resembling aesthetics). In saying this, I thoroughly enjoyed our day of exploring the old city, and lying on the grass under a tree at the base of these incredible walls.

But what I enjoyed more was our means of arrival from Turkey. The only option for us was the Hydrofoil. As we entered the cabin we realised that this was a vessel of total luxury and exclusivity about 30-40 years ago, with ornate, faded carpet running the length of the extra wide aisle, oversize airliner style seats, and a captain who dashed into the cabin in full whites and hat (pants with a possible 70’s flair at the bottom?) and announced himself as our captain for the day, before stepping into the cockpit (I use this term because he looked and acted more like the pilot of a fighter jet - ala Top Gun - than the captain of a boat). The 90 minutes of literally planing on the surface of the water at a ridiculous “cruising” speed, banking into turns and watching other craft wallowing in our wake was too short. What a way to travel!

Photos: The fearsome wake of our Hydrofoil, and the view from under my hat while lying on the grass in the Venetian fortress city of Rhodes

Cruisin’ the Med

From Olympus we jumped on a Gulet (large cruising yacht) for four days cruising the Med coast, along with:

our new Kiwi friends from Whakatane

the friendly Aussie bar staff who had finished their stint at the backpackers and would prove to be excellent boat-mates with their friendly banter, similar interest in exploring the surrounds of our moorings (both onshore and underwater), interest in backgammon, and some top-notch play lists on their iPods

Two Californian post-grad students (one Japanese, one Turkish) and a local Turk girl who were travelling together

Two girls from Canada/South Africa who were on their annual holiday together

Four heavy drinking, 60+ Brits who would make us youngies look pathetic with their all-day-all-night drinking, games, and singing

One very brusque, very old German man who made the most of meal times and had an allergic reaction and his legs were swollen to twice the size they should be, meaning that he had to stay horizontal on the deck as much as possible (not very different to the rest of us, though he take part in doing flips off the side of the boat)

Crew consisting of (grumpy) Captain Ali, (friendly) Chef Ali, Old Man Captain (named due to always being at the helm - and being old), and Ozzi the deckhand (whose duty was everything other than steering the boat and cooking the meals)

Boat life in the Mediterranean is something that I could get used to - waking up on the deck to the sun, going for a swim around a few bays before breakfast, then settling on the deck for a cruise to some nearby ruins (sometimes underwater) or villages, anchor for lunch, exploring, swimming, maybe some wakeboarding or biscuiting, then cruising to another secluded bay to anchor up for more swimming, dinner, a bit of party and games, and talking ourselves to sleep on the deck again. Needless to say, I managed to get rid of that pesky “t-shirt tan”. A boat (or at least access to one) is definitely something for the bucket list.

Our last few days in Turkey were spent in Fethiye - a sleepy little marina town with a very cool gorge nearby. Emma and I made sure that all other nationalities present had no doubts as to which country was the toughest by going further into the gorge (which becomes increasingly difficult to navigate) than anyone else by crawling through water pools under huge boulders and climbing with ease the slippery waterfalls that had locals stopping to knot t-shirts into lifelines. Kiwi rugged - respect!

Photos: Boat life - play time, relax time, and meal time

Living among the Trees

Our minibus from Antalya to the backpacker mecca of Olympus was shared with two Kiwi girls - Vanessa and Trish - from Whakatane, one a lawyer and the other a set designer/builder for the film industry. These girls were a welcome dose of chilled out Kiwi-style conversation and travel company, staying in the tree hut next to us and keeping us constantly entertained with much missed Kiwi humour.

After being on the road for so long, the relaxed atmosphere (so much so that it was literally horizontal most of the day) was just what the doctor ordered. Moving slowly between our beds in the tree huts, the day beds in the communal area, and the beach just down the road kept us occupied for a good 3 ½ days (no matter what people say, travel isn’t all hard work). Luckily the friendly Aussies working at our hostel had become experts at mixing a good Sangria, and even gave us tips on how to walk to the only local attraction besides the beach and the hilltop ruins - Chimaera, where natural gas leaks out of the hillside and has kept flames burning through the rocks for thousands of years.

An important discovery in Olympus was Raki - a Turkish spirit that is clear, tastes exactly like black jellybeans, and is about 45% alcohol. Luckily the way to drink it is to mix it 50/50 with water, which makes the whole glass go cloudy - this novelty in itself was enough incentive for the four of us to share a bottle on our second night in the tree huts (the Aussies were busy losing the football to Germany).

Photos: Emma in our treehut, and harnessing the power of natural gas to prepare a BBQ banana from my pack

How do you like Kiwi Kebab?!

The first real city with a culture that isn’t centered on tourism (but still has plenty aimed at us foreign travellers) also delivered our first sea views since Ephesus(we were missing the water!). A stunning cliff top walk along the Mediterranean was our first experience of Turkey’s Southern coast, and after 3 days here Antalya gained it’s place as Turkey’s best city (in the Mind of Mark, at least). Not the chaotic metropolis of Istanbul, Antalya has a real community, café-culture, and somewhat Wellingtonian feel to it. The size of the city provides enough interest and diversity to keep people entertained (and employed), while the climate on the Med has a few plusses over that of Wellington. So who would guess that my lasting memory of this place would be getting a haircut?…..

How to get a haircut, Turk-Style…

1. Leave the tourist district of the old-town, find the main street of the city, and walk one street back - you’ll know that you’re in the right place when food prices, hygiene standards, and the use of English all fall by roughly half.
2. Choose your salon. We (admittedly, I needed a bit of encouragement from Emma) went for an empty place with a male hairdresser with a well trimmed moustache, tidy but semi fashionable hair and clothes - I wasn’t wanting to kick-start a male modelling career, just get a tidy-up that wouldn’t be dated back to the 80s.
3. Introduce yourself over a cup of tea, communicate your intention to get a trim, and try to relax in the hope that your man knows what he’s doing with those scissors.
4. First comes the shampoo and conditioner, with massage. Massage that spreads to the neck. Then the shoulders. Then you are pushed forward onto the counter and it becomes a back massage too. Stopping just above the beltline, the hairdresser turned masseur moves to the arms to continue this surprise relaxation, all the way down to the hands, cracking the knuckles. But wait - there’s more! Add a couple of extreme arm stretches that I’ve only ever seen done by a Russian swimming coach, before he grabs the head in both hands, lolls it around before whipping it left, then right, cracking joints both times. Now that you feel like a very happy and relaxed rag doll, the trim begins.
5. One doesn’t realise just how technical one’s haircut is until one has to explain what one wants - through charades. After a good 5-10 minutes of hand signals and sample photo flicking and pointing, the hairdresser should know what to do, and have the right tools for the job laid out in front of you. Cutting commences.
6. Cutting is complete. Or so you think. Then out come the smallest pair of scissors you have ever seen. I thought that I’d be at least 35 before I needed a nose hair trim, but this guy somehow found some hair up there, and he trimmed it. Same-same for the ears.
7. Ahh, all done. Looking so fresh and so clean. Then comes out a small jar of liquid and a large cotton bud, along with the question, “Do you like Turkish Kebabs?”. Being both polite and truthful, I answer, “Yes, I love them!”. He dips the cotton in the liquid, pulls out a lighter to ignite what I realise is something like ethanol, and wraps my head in his spare arm, crying, “How do you like Kiwi Kebab?!”. Taken completely by surprise, I am no challenge for him as he controls my head and swipes at my face, neck and ears with the flaming stick. I realise that he’s burning off the “peach fuzz”, or very faint hair that most people have on their cheeks and ears if you look very closely. When done, he laughs, and when I’m done checking that my eyebrows still exist, I join in. Emma was laughing the whole time.
8. A lemon scented ethanol sanitizer/aftershave is patted all over the face, and a 5 minute face and sinus massage gets rid of any soot left from the burninating.
9. Hairdryer and soft brush are used to remove clippings, then a second rinse/shampoo completes the job.
10. You realise that this is the best cut you’ve had in years, the best massage in years, and that you look the best you have since the last time you got dressed up for something so important that your Mum felt the need to straighten your tie. Share another cup of tea with the man who has proven himself a true master of his art, pay him the price of a student rate cut in NZ, shake his hand, and walk away feeling on top of the world.

Photo: The Master protects the eyes as he turns my face into a "Kiwi Kebab"

Turkey’s Crown Jewels…at pace

After Gallipoli we worked our way down the Aegian Coast (Western Turkey) through Troy, Pergamom, and Ephesus, before cutting inland through Pamukkale to Cappadocia. An action-packed whirlwind tour of Turkey’s crown jewels (when it comes to ancient history and natural wonders) was perfectly organised through Hayden in Istanbul, with us staying in the best places (within budget, of course), getting the best transport, and, when necessary, the best guides (a luxury that was well worth it). Look out, here come those bullet points…

• Troy - Though there are very few remaining ruins, an excellent guide wrapped such a story around the 9 (nine!) separate civilisations that stood on the site that it could have been an empty field and we still would have been able to imagine the Trojans wheeling that giant wooden horse through the gates. Favourite facts included why the site was so popular (the wind blows seasonally, so trade ships would have to wait for the right winds before passing through the Dardanelles - and so they hung out at Troy), and the description of how the city of Troy moved towards the sea as it retreated (the current shore is now 5km from where it was when Achilles gifted the big wooden horse).
• Pergamom - An ancient Greek Acropolis (city on the top of the hill), where parchment was invented for the ancient world’s second biggest library (the biggest - in Alexandria - refused to trade papyrus to keep Pergamom from growing it’s collection). Also, according to our guide, where the convention of clapping at the end of a show began (citizens had to wait until the emperor had left the theatre before they could leave, and the emperor always fell asleep - so they would wake him at the end of the show with clapping. True or not, our wicked old guide delighted in telling the story and stringing us along for a good 5 minutes). Even driving towards the Acropolis was fascinating as we were shown the Greek names inscribed over the doorways of houses which had been left during the population exchange of the early 1920s. At the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, Greeks in Turkey and Turks in Greece were forced by their governments to switch places in the name of national unity. Many of the Greeks etched their names over their doorways in the hope of returning one day (I can’t imagine the NZ government ever getting away with something like this!).
• Ephesus - as far as ruins go, this was the business. Column-lined marble streets, 3 storey libraries, bath houses, apartments, a 25,000 seat theatre (Auckland’s Vector Arena is 10,000?) and even brothels stand as they were two thousand years ago. Even the herds of tourists following their guide’s white numbered flags couldn’t suppress the majesty of this place which is one of the centres (and wonders) of the ancient world. After a day of photographing, inspecting and feeling the architecture and monuments that we studied in high school classical studies, the most salient piece of trivia from the day was that there is speculation at the existence of an underground tunnel spanning the road between the library and the brothel - it seems that the excuse of working (or studying) late isn’t just a modern one.
• Basilica (and Tomb) of St John (John the Baptist) and the house of The Virgin Mary - it is not proven that these places are what they claim to be, but it is certain that John came to this part of the world, and sat atop this hill to write a good chunk of the Bible (there is also an island nearby with a cave where the book of Revelations was written). Christian or not, there is something special about standing here where part of the most influential text in history was produced.
• Selcuk - eating dinner under a ten metre high ancient roman aqueduct was pretty cool - water was carried from springs 40km away to supply an estimated 250,000 people at Ephesus. I doubt any of today’s infrastructure will be as impressive as this in 2000 years time.
• Pammukale - Brad, Emma and I were close to being totally ruined out, so the towering white cliffs of Pammukale were exactly the refresher that we needed. The town is a complete tourist trap, with the capacity to feed, water and shelter more than ten times as many people as were there at the time we were. But once we ditched our shoes and started climbing up the calcium cliffs, with the fabled healing water flowing down over our feet (unfortunately it didn’t seem to work on my ugly toe), we could have been a thousand miles away. The mountain-top Hierapolis (an ancient Roman spa and health resort) had a very cool theatre, but the highlight was definitely watching the sun set from atop the blinding white mountain.
• Cappadocia - In a month of Turkey travel, I’ve seen more pictures of Cappadocia than anything else. It’s the place with the underground cities that were used to hide from aggressors (and put the Viet Cong tunnels to shame), with fairy chimney rock formations that stretch for miles and miles, and where most hotels offer cave-rooms such as the one which we stayed in, for more than a touch of novelty value. If we weren’t chilling in our cave (the best place to retreat from the 44 degree midday heat), we were scootering around the valleys, running up rock formations, climbing through underground tunnels which used to be home to thousands of people, or wandering through 2000 year old cave churches which were the first in the region (when Christians were still the minority, and persecuted for their beliefs). The landscapes are like nothing else, and the history - and hardship - apparent everywhere is just as fascinating.

Photo: Walking the calcium cliffs of Pammukale