Last Day in Diafani

Monday, July 17, 2011—Diafani, Karpathos, Greece



My last day in Diafani. Had a pretty mellow day, mainly because I’m still recovering from my big hike a couple days ago. I did manage to hike over to a beach past Papa Minas Bay, which I tried to hit earlier in my stay here, but was stymied by high ridgelines and wind. The beach wasn’t that interesting or anything, but I hate unfinished business, so I mostly went there just to do it. Later I hit a better beach closer to home and went for a swim—and that was pretty much my day (I slept in a bit, so I got a late start).


I fly out of Pigadia back to Crete tomorrow morning at nine-thirty. I’ve managed to score a ride down there with the owner of my hotel, who’s going down to pick up some arriving guests. It’s about an hour-and-a-half trip, though, which means we’ll need to be on the road by a little after seven, which is a bummer. It’s weird how much time I’ve spent based out of here. I’d hardly paid any attention to this place when I read about it in my Lonely Planet guide and only ended up here because of a quirk in the ferry services, but Diafani, and northern Karpathos in general, has turned out to be a highlight of my trip. It makes me wonder how many other places the guidebooks wash over that are really quite cool in reality.






I’m still not a hundred percent sure where I’m heading once I’m back in Crete. I’m landing in Sitia, but I don’t think I want to stay there; I’ll probably go right to the bus station from the airport. I may just let the bus schedule decide for me. There are three main areas I want to hit before going home, but there are a number of ways I can get to each of them—so I don’t really have to do them in any particular order. I’ll probably shoot for Plakias, a beachie area on the southern coast of the central part of Crete. The annoying part of this place, though, is that there’s no busses heading west from there, which is the direction I need to go—so more fucking Cretan backtracking, up to Iraklio or Hania on the north coast and then back south, which means traveling about five times the distance than if I could just scoot west. The God damn Crete bus routes are really pissing me off, even when I’m not actually on the stupid island … Up and down, side to side, but nothing even remotely diagonal: Rob the rook returns …