Caves, Feet, and Waterfalls

Crete has over 100 gorges on it.. That's alot of really deep crevices. When I saw the 500 steps we had to walk down, it was entirely joyless. I'll be going up those too. Some stairs were more or less goat dumping grounds, so it was important to watch your step. Without a railing I just tried to look ahead, or to the side that didn't have 'death' written all over it. When we got down to a landing we scaled a few fences. We reached the cave and at the time it felt a little anticlimactic. 40 minute hike, and it seems like a bunny hole!..



Step inside the bunny hole, and it's an entirely different story. The cave was sprouting water from every direction. The mosses were fresh and trickling water-- fresh, ice cold mountain water! I wanted to turn to the camera and start schpeeling some mountain fresh soap!





Of course Uli gets out his camera and starts snapping. He asks if I'd like to get in and shoot a few, and I said sure. It was freezing, damp, and kinda squishy, but SO MUCH FUN! I couldn't stop laughing. It felt as though there were a million fire hoses spraying at me. I'd go to sit on a chunk of moss, start to smile, and it would almost disintegrate and the mini spring from underneath it would shoot out at me. I'm sure my face was captured in a 100 really contorted ways. I was using my limited professional knowledge of acting VERY COOL as a model, and stepped in the wrong spot. A good chunk of the ROCKS here are like ZEBRA MUSCLES... and could it go any other way? I shriveled up like a hurt pup. I sliced the ball area as well as the heal. Not deep, but just enough to make walking so painful. HOW FRUSTRATING. How's a girl suppose to work it in a Cretan water fall when these rocks just owned me?! My new lack of balance turned into a SLIP, which led me falling into the 4ft deep water.



Laugh, please. It was funny. Or it is now.


Don't worry, I Grace Kelley-ed it. Classy improvisation. I PLANNED on that. I had on my swimsuit, and just splashed around in that instead. Luckily, everyone was fine with hanging out in the gorge for the day, so we were going to find a more level area to lay.





Uli went first, scaling down a waterfall. He has about 6 lenses with him, plus his camera. I don't know a whole lot about cameras, but I'm guessing that amount is pretty near 10 G. So when his bag FELL OFF THE CLIFF... INTO THE WATER(!!!). It fell in slow motion. All I got out of my mouth was 'Ulliii yooooo' which clearly means "Excuse me Uli, but your bag of 10,000 euros worth of camera equipment is sliding off the edge into oblivion."



I heard a loud german swear word, which sound so much more gratifying than English swear words. He lept into the water and pulled his bag to shore. We all sat motionless on the hill. I didn't dare move. Although he had a waterproof casing, the zipper wasn't entirely zipped. A few minutes later he motioned us down. Only one of the lenses got wet, but it wasn't enough to damage it. And with one breath, I released all the nausea that was building up in my gut. By the end of the day, we decided to hold off on snorkeling (I was relieved!), so the adventure continues! What a shame that we'll have to visit the palm tree forest AND snorkel on the same day. Rough life!