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Crete Senesi: typical rural countryside Tuscan scene with the brown of the hills and the cypresses lined curved roads.
Crete senesi are literally ‘Siennese clays’ and the distinctive grey colouration of the soil gives the landscape an appearance often described as lunar. This characteristic clay, known as mattaione, represents the sediments of the Pliocene sea which covered the area between 2.5 and 4.5 million years ago. In the nearby is also the semi-arid area known as Accona Desert. The area suffered extreme depopulation due to plagues in the Middle Ages, and the attendant prolonged lack of cultivation facilitated an almost complete erosion of the topsoil. It was later settled by Sicilian farmers adept to cultivating cereals on less than optimal conditions, and who were able to establish sustainable cultivation of wheat on the Siennese clays.
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The beach of Preveli, Finikas (Phoenix) as it is officially known, is situated at the southern coast of Crete, some 40 kilometers far from Rethymnon at the South. It is a unique sandy beach, very beautiful, with a forest of palm trees, which make it quite exotic. The mouth of the river Kourtaliotis is at this beach; the river has enough water even in summer, and just before flowing into the sea it forms a small lagoon; thus, if you choose this beach for swimming, you might have the chance to bathe both in salted and sweet water! Walking up the river is a fascinating experience; the palm trees grown on the banks of the river give a rich shade and the soil is even and sandy. In times you may think that you are in an African oasis.
www.greekhotel.com/crete/rethymno/preveli/beach/preveli-b...
We were charmed by this townswoman, who let us take her photo on the front porch of her stucco house in Skalani, a small village in Crete. It's one of my all-time favorite shots. We were invited into the house of a nearby neighbor who had never before seen an American.
Phalasarna is an ancient Greek harbor town on the northwest coast of Crete. Because ancient writers rarely mentioned the site, its history is known virtually entirely from archaeology. A learned observer (Captain T. A. B. Spratt, of the Royal Navy), noted in 1859 that the former harbor of the deserted site was now 200 yards from the sea and that the ancient sea coast must have risen at least twenty four feet. Modern excavation has confirmed this judgment. Radiocarbon dating of fossil algae along the ancient sea level mark on the cliffs around Phalasarna estimates the sudden sea level change at some time more than sixteen centuries ago. A very probable event was the great earthquake and tsunami of 21 July A.D. 365, which wreaked catastrophic damage on all the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean and was recorded by dozens of ancient Greek and Roman writers. But four centuries previously Phalasarna had already been destroyed by the hand of man. The city was a notorious pirate refuge and when in 68-67 BCE the Romans sent forces to eliminate piracy from the eastern Mediterranean they stormed Phalasarna, blocked its harbor with massive masonry, and relocated the inhabitants. No ancient sources testify to these events, but evidence of burning and the harbor blockaage itself suggest the tentative conclusions of the excavators, Elpida Hadjidaki and Frank Frost, of the University of California, Santa Barbara