Hiking through the kingdom of the oak trees!
Yesterday it was hiking day!
It has been a while since my last hiking but summer in Greece is not made for walking :)
Actually it has been more than 4 months since my Hiking through the ultimate gorge of Europe! but today I'll share with you a route equally beautiful and mostly unknown. This time, my hiking buddies and I, crossed an amazing gorge, literally in our neighborhood, that is extremely underestimated and undervalued.
For those that don't know it, I am living at the northeast side of Crete, the biggest and most fascinating from the Greek islands. The entrance of the gorge is almost at the middle of the route from "Agios Nikolaos" to "Sitia", just before the village "Sfaka" and its name is "Tsigounis". You won't find any signs so you might need some help finding your way in and probably your way out, too :)
It took us about 3,5 hours to cross the gorge and find ourselves from the attitude of 220 meters of the main road to the plateau of "Monokara" at a height of 750 meters and 2 more hours to come back through dirty roads and paths.
The gorge is dominated by a local variety of oak trees that provides thick shadow and a protected environment for the vegetation underneath. Eastern Crete is suffering from drought and it is only in gorges that we can see this kind of vegetation, this time of the year. In every aspect a pleasure for all the senses!
At some point the terrain is quite rough and a little climbing is necessary. Nothing too difficult but you have to be prepared that it is more than a walk in the woods.
Exiting the gorge, the weather got foggy and we missed the amazing view from the plateau but we didn't care at all. We all agreed that it was one of the most fascinating gorges we have ever been and looking forward for an excuse to come back!
Thank you for reading and if you want to know more about me you can check out my introduction post.
Commenting, upvoting and resteeming are highly appreciated!
the Daily "Spotlight"!
Thank you so much!
Looks like a great little hike, the rock scramble sections look fun!
Yes it is fun and it is 5' from my doorstep!
So beautiful! I love hiking too
Thank you @livvu!
Hiking has become a big part of my life since I moved to Crete :)
Congratulations! Your high-quality travel content caught our attention and has earned you a partial upvote. We love your hard work and hope to encourage you to continue to publish strong travel-related content. Thank you for using #travelfeed
Learn more about our travel project on Steemit by clicking on the banner above and join our community on Discord.
Thank you @travelfeed :)
Congratulations @fotostef! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPDo not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
Dear @fotostef,
Your story attracted our attention and we would like to introduce our tag #archisteem that could provide you with some extra support. For your information, we are currently running the project – 1001 Places to Remember. Your content is a fit for the project and could be qualified for the 10 Steem reward biweekly contest.
It would be great if we can have this story of yours included in the project. If you agree, please reply to us.
Do drop by and take a look :) Hope to see you around soon.
Stay tuned and Steem on!
@archisteem and team