October 29, 2003

European Vacation Part 17: The Melidoni Caves.

We parked our bikes and took a few pictures up on the mountain top near the entrance to the caves. We were pretty excited, all we knew about the place was that it was formerly used for cult worship during the Neolithic, Minoan and Archaic periods. Maybe we'd get to see a torture chamber (or at least a human sacrifice altar!!) just yet!

chris a, fatty, grant — Fatty, Grant and Chris.

The carved rock steps leading down to the cave entrance.

chris a — We were the ONLY tourists there making the experience of descending down into them even creepier.

Here's a picture of me hanging back near the entrance...

chris a, fatty, grant — ...I claimed I wanted to get a picture of these three on their way down, but it was really just my sneaky was of getting them to go first in case there were any ScoobyDoo-esque villians waiting below.

The main room of the caves from the top of the lower stairs.

Hahaha. Check out my chapped-ass, red "been riding a scooter in the cold too long" nose. Ouchie.

chris a — This photo should give you some perspective on the size of the main room you descend into. It was breath-taking.

One of the massive stalagmite formations hanging down from the ceiling.

Another one from underneath.

fatty — Here's Fatty with ANOTHER potential JDate photo. This one gets my vote. Nothing gets those cyber Jewesses hotter than knowing a man's into spelunking. Awwwww, yeah.

Another pic of some of the ribbon-like stalagmites hanging from the ceiling.

grant — Grant off to explore one of the smaller side-caves.

chris a — Chris raising tha roof.

So apparently there are few attractions in this area of Crete that aren't related to martyrs of the Turkish occupation. Turns out that in January of 1834, the Turks invaded the nearby village. 370 men, women and children refused to surrender and sought refuge in the nearby cave. The Turks found their hiding place, sealed the entrance with boulders, and then lit a huge fire behind them at the mouth of the cave. All 370 Cretans inside died of smoke inhalation. The box you see is a memorial sacrophagus that contains their bones.

After we were done checking out the caves, we relaxed on the hill right outside the mouth of the cave and admired the view.

Awesome, right?

grant — Back in the parking lot, Grant snapped a bunch of pics as we prepared to head back to Rethymnon.

fatty, me — Me and Dave.

Here's us heading down the mountain the caves are on back into the village of Melidoni.

grant — Back in the village, we stopped for gas and debated if we had time to do any more sightseeing and still be able to make it back to the condo before nightfall.

fatty, grant — Fatty and Grant.

chris a — Chris. Hahahahah.

And me. Someone call your high school photo teacher, I think what we've got here is a "work of art! " I call this one "Self-Reflections of a Helmeted Scooterteer."

In the end we decided that we probably had time to do some more sightseeing and decided to head back to the coastal town of Bali and ride around some more on the roads that overlooked the water.

chris a — More dangerous, high speed scooter hijinx for the benefit of the camera.

fatty — Back in Bali, we stopped to take pics.

Back in Bali, we stopped to take pics.

chris a — Then Chris had an idea!

chris a, fatty — Not completely happy with the shaky, hand-held quality of the previous "Scootering" footage we'd shot a few days earlier, Chris strapped the camera to the back of my bike so we could film our mountainous ascent on the coastal backroads. (I'll get around to posting clips of this someday. Don't worry, with the exception of Grant trying to brain we while I'm squatting down and talking to the bike-mounted cam, you're really not missing much).

chris a, fatty, me — After fucking around for too long in Bali, we ended up having to make the 35 minute trip back to our condo at dusk (freezing our asses off the whole way). After dropping the bikes off and picking up our car, we headed to a nearby restaurant for an early dinner.

fatty, grant, me — Hahahah.

That homemade village wine sure has got...

chris a — ...a kick to it. Hooo-ah!

fatty, grant — Back at the condo after dinner, Fatty managed to get off a fairly decent braining while Grant took a nap. He was about to lean in closer, but Grant woke up (This kid's so high-strung a mouse fart'd wake him up).

chris a, fatty — Being that we were leaving Crete in the morning to head back to the UK, we decided to take one more trip into Rethymnon to walk around and get some ice cream.

Oh, and to look at the posters advertising the hugely uni-boobed woman that we'd apparently missed during our stay. How could this have happened?

chris a, fatty, grant, me — With a fistfulla cone, we bid a last fond-farewell to Rethymnon.