On the Beaches

While we were still in Athens, we went to a beach. It was nice, though for us, it was a little too civilized as it had manicured sand, a breakwater to tame the surf, and too many people.

Now, the beaches around Crete are a different story. We spent the morning on tour, beach to beach to beach, three in all. We spent most of our time at two of them.

The first one, directly down the mountain from our villa was small, had black sand, and a group of people camping there. The tents were just out of sight of the 4-don'ts sign, the first of which was No Camping. The camping  didn't surprise us, but the sign did. Many things seem to lack regulation in Greece, and we would have expected the rural beaches to fit that category.

We moved on to the second beach which was much longer, it too had a 4-don'ts sign. But, being a much longer beach, it had a lot more campers. Now this seemed to fit, because it's one thing to have a regulation, it's another to enforce it. It appears that the beach regulations are similar to the driving laws, they are more recommendations or maybe even another step down, suggestions.

While beachcombing the second beach, we came upon a few younger folks enjoying their time  au-naturel. That of course was fine, so we carried on down the beach a little further. Soon, it became apparent that au-naturel was as common as not. As we've travelled, we've run across our share of nude beaches, but quite often they're posted as such. Now of course, nude bathing wasn't one of the 4 don'ts either, so it's just the way it was, on these beautiful beaches under the Grecian sky.

Click here for the next story in this series:
http://travellingwithsteveandmarlene.blogspot.ca/2015/07/kourtaliotiko-gorge.html