Nature And Outdoors in Chania

Of all Crete's towns, Chania sits closest to the island's big outdoors. The entrance to the Samaria Gorge — the Omalos plateau — is only forty kilometres away: leave early and you are on the trail by seven. The full route runs sixteen kilometres down to Agia Roumeli, through pine woods, the abandoned village of Samaria and the Iron Gates, where the walls close in to three metres; the way back is a ferry to Chora Sfakion. There is also a gentler version — walking in from the sea and returning the same way. Above it all rise the White Mountains, the Lefka Ori: dozens of summits over two thousand metres, visited on a separate mountain tour of high plateaus, stone deserts and shepherd tracks.

The second magnet is the northwest. Balos lagoon, with its shallows stretched between a cape and the island of Gramvousa, can be reached two ways: by boat from Kissamos or by jeep along the peninsula's dirt road — the jeep option buys you an almost empty beach before the ferries arrive. Further south lies Elafonissi, a sandbar with a pink tint. A chapter of its own is the Rodopou peninsula: the asphalt ends quickly there, and only four-wheel drives make it to Menies beach and the ruins of the sanctuary of Diktynna.

For something softer there is the Imbros Gorge — eight kilometres, walls up to three hundred metres, an old cobbled path underfoot. South over the mountains waits Preveli, where a palm-lined river meets the Libyan Sea. And the day can end with a sunset safari: switchbacks above Chania, villages that press their own olive oil, and a glass of raki at a lookout while the sun drops into the sea.