Hiking Sfakia to Loutro

After our brief stint in Athens, we flew into Chania and immediately took a bus to Chora Sfakion (a.k.a. Sfakia). We were really pushing the limit on time as our flight landed at 2:30pm and the bus to Chora Sfakion leaves at 3:30pm. As luck may have it, I was asked to check my backpack when we checked in for our flight but Andrew wasn't yet his backpack looked so much larger... I am convinced our backpacks were the same size but I was singled out because the backpack look larger relative to the backpack carrier. We did test it against those luggage size things at the airport and his did fit while mine barely did not :(

Anyway, I digressed from the topic at hand! While we thought we would barely make it to the bus, it turned out to be fine as we were reassured by our taxi driver from the airport who was cool as a cucumber. The cost of a taxi would have been upwards of 100 euros whereas the bus was a fraction of the price.

We spent one short night in Sfakia as our end goal was to use that as a starting point for the rest of our hikes along the southwest of Crete.

That's the small town of Sfakia at sun rise the next morning as we embarked on our hike. There is no editing on this photo as I wanted to show how calm and dimly lit it was.

The hike starts next to the parking lot where you are dropped off by the bus from Chania and you have a bit of a steep scramble to get to the top. Once you're at the top, it's paved road for the first 20-30 minutes of the way.

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The road is peaceful in the morning as there are very few cars. We passed by a barking dog along the way as well as several goat skulls on a unique property but that was an outlier.

Along the paved road, you'll pass by Ilingas beach which is a nice stop if you want to go for a swim. We did not make the stop as it was still pretty early on in our hike and in the morning.

Past Ilingas is where the trail begins on rocky hills. You first take a descent towards Sweet Water beach

This is me being happy that the hike has been easy so far. It's my 2nd time hiking with a backpack and this time we'd packed for 2 weeks. I did cheat on this hike and bit and offload a few pounds to Andrew. It was his initial offer anyway! While hiking down, we encountered goats upon goats upon goats! Cue the goat picture intermission:

Look at how MAJESTIC they are...come on! A part of me thinks Andrew should look into becoming a wildlife photographer. Okay, that ends my goat picture intermission for this blog post.

 We took a short dip in the ocean just before getting to Sweet Water beach as we found this amazing outlet into the water but unfortunately did not take pictures of that. #livinginthemoment? #forgot

We made it to Sweet Water, snapped some photos, and went on our way as it was quickly getting pretty hot despite still being morning. It was probably around mid-70s as this point and was supposed to hit 90s by noon.

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We encountered a ton more goats and finally spotted Loutro at around the 2 hour mark from when first started the hike. We spent the day at the beach there then caught the 7pm and last ferry  of the day to Agia Roumeli where we planned to check out Samaria Gorge.

As an ending note, I was stung by a bee for the first time in my life at Loutro and I was terrified that I would react poorly. Did some research and it turns out you won't know if you are mortally allergic to bee stings until the second bee sting soooo looking forward to that...!