By John Freedman
Posted on Contemplating Crete November 10, 2021
This time of year the clouds roll in over Crete and, on more than an occasion, the winds will whip them up into a froth. That is true all over the island, including Chania today where I live. I am, at this moment, staring out my window, watching huge vessels of swirling black, gray, and white clouds race over the Sea of Crete from east to west. If we were to follow those clouds, and that wind, there is a good chance that we - if we were to take a few of the necessary turns (a few of them hairpins) - would find our way to Elafonisi, one of the most famous, beloved and mysterious beaches on Crete. I can do that without following the wind today. I can do it merely by dipping into my archive of photos. The images you see here were taken during two different trips to Elafonisi on the far southwest corner of the island. Both trips were made during the off-season when one need not constantly duck and weave to avoid the masses of tourists covering the pink sands with their pink and reddening bodies. Elafonisi, which, we are told, means Deer Island, is a relatively new entry on the Famous Beaches of the World list. I suppose it was the internet that created the monster that made it the madhouse it now is during the summer months. Don't get me wrong, the beauty of the place remains no matter what. But, for the most part, you will only find me here in the winter months when I can fantasize about the whole place belonging to me. One of the beach's claims to fame is the ever-shifting sand bar that connects, or does not connect, the beach to the island protruding out into the Libyan Sea. You see that sand bar in the first photo immediately below. A bit of a stream cuts through the sand, creating an easily surmounted barrier between the beach at large (to the left) and the island. There are days when the sand has built up so high that there is no break between beach and island, and there are days when active seas pretty much wipe out the sandbar altogether. I have never seen the same configuration on any of my trips to Elafonisi (which lies about 1 1/2 hours by car via spectacular, winding mountain roads from Chania). It pretty much guarantees that you'll have a new experience every time you come here. The hype of the pink sand is, indeed, part hype and part truth. That is, there is a lot of pink sand here, most of it hovering around the water's edge. The huge swaths of sandy beach further inland are perfectly traditional yellow-brownish-whitish sand. But in the areas where tiny, crunched up seashells gather, you can get some spectacular pink designs. The Greek Travel Ideas website gives as good an explanation of this phenomenon as any: "The characteristic pink color is thanks to an oyster-like microorganism called Benthic Foraminifera. The foraminifera are tiny, shelled animals that live in the sea, attached by a pseudopod (i.e. a ‘false foot’) under various rocks, reefs, and caves to eat. The shell of these animals is bright pink or red. When other animals feed on them or when they die, their shells calcify and are washed up on the sand, mixing with it and giving it the pink pigmentation in various shades. This process has been going on for the last 540 million years, and most of the foraminifera shells and remnants in the pink beaches are actually fossils!" Elafonisi is not the only beach on Crete with pink sand - you can find it at several locations in the west (which I know better than the east), including Balos, Falassarna, Kedrodasos and others. But Elafonisi is no one-trick pony - there are dozens of reasons to come here besides the color of the sand. If you're interested in history, there are even a few important events that have taken place here over the centuries - including one of the worst massacres of the Cretan people by soldiers of the Ottoman army in 1824. But the winds that whip across this blessed land throughout the winter, as well as the sun that beats down upon it mercilessly in the summer, have done much to erase any real sense of history here. That is unusual for Crete, with all its Minoan palaces, its Greek and Roman theater (at Aptera), its Mycenaean, Roman, Venetian and Turkish ruins... One of Crete's great attractions for me is that I almost constantly sense I am existing in numerous timelines at once - as I walk through Chania I know I am walking over the remains of the great Minoan city of Kydonia, I see the incredible traces left by the Venetians and the Turks. Every few steps I take I encounter reminders of Crete's heroic defense against the Nazis during World War II... Crete is a place where multiple layers of history wash over you constantly. Elafonisi for me, at least in wintertime, is the opposite. It is pure nature, geology and elements as God imagined them in their pristine form. This is a place a mind and a body can go to be recharged, even if sometimes it is only by way of looking over a few photographs on a computer screen.
All photos and text © copyright 2021 by John Freedman. If you wish to use either text or photos, I will almost surely grant permission as long as you do the courtesy of asking.
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