Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Sitia, Crete, and Minoan ruins at Kato Zarkis


a cemetary in a village in the mountains near Kato Zarkis - click to enlarge


Another view...of family tombs at a roadside church - click to enlarge

Yesterday, we drove from our aparment in Sitia about an hour along the rugged, twisting, coastline, up and down steep, rocky hills, to another Minoan Palace. The palace at Kato Zakris is roughly 4,000 years old, and was probably destroyed by the cataclysmic volcanic explosion from Santorini/Thira in 1650 B.C. The volcanic explosion is said to have been the strongest ever on earth.

Zakris is an extensive ruins, far less reconstructed than the one at Knossos. Two nights from now, we will be staying on the very rim of the caldera formed on Santorini when the volcano exploded and blew a gigantic hole in the middle of the island. The hole—a calderas--filled with seawater. Our hotel in Thira is 30 meters from the edge of the caldera. That volcanic blast wiped out most of the Minoan civilizations along the Aegean.

Click to enlarge. Jack and Keelin Curran at the Minoan Palace at Kato Zarkis

We are currently staying in Setia, Crete, a little-touristed, sleepy, 8,000 person town, lined with great beaches (including an almost deserted one right near our apartment). It’s great swimming here, in the 90 degree water. . .the same temperature as the air. The water is very clean, and the Aegean here is bright blue. The beaches are lined with fantastic round pebbles in reds, greens, greys, ivory, white, and agate. I’ve picked up a few handfuls for my now extensive collection of rocks from North Africa, Central Oregon, Puget Sound, Canada, Montana, Idaho, California, the Oregon coast, Turkey, Cape Cod, and the San Juan Islands.

The Central courtyard at the palace at Kato Zakris - click to enlarge

I’ve noticed on this trip that I have not experienced ruin- or museum-fatigue. In fact, on the odd days when we haven’t visited an ancient site, I actually miss them. I keep trying to get Column to write a counterpoint on the ruins. At times he’s clearly felt like “we’re travelling two hours to look at another rubble heap of columns, bricks, stones, and broken statuary?!”

If we didn't have enough museums and ruins for the day, we stopped at an old Greek Orthodox Monastery on the way home for half an hour and inspected many Ikon paintings and old engravings and manuscripts. It was interesting to see how deteriorated the paintings had become since they were painted five centuries ago...when you remember that we have been looking at incredibly intact frescoes and cave paintings on this trip up to 3,500 years older (see, for example the earlier post on the caves and churches of Cappodocia).

Perhaps the most interesting exhibit--for me at least--were the displays of blunderbusses, rifles, pistols and ammunition from wars in the 1800s, World War I and World War II, when the brothers put down their devotions and scholarly pursuits to take up arms and defend Greece, their Monastery and Church against various maurading hordes. . .up to and including the Nazis (who, as you may know, savaged Crete during World War II).

Finally, in the bay at Zakris, sits a listing, rusting freighter thay may or may not be abandoned. I wrote a poem about the freighter, which I will post next.
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