Have You Ever Hiked Through a Gorge?

Hi! My name’s Alexandra Strong, and I’m a Tufts student studying abroad in Greece this semester.  After a hectic first month in Athens, I’ve finally settled into my new home here, but I’m realizing that it’s already October and I only have three more months here!  Time is moving by pretty quickly, but I’ve already learned so much from this beautiful country about different people, cultures, and landscapes.  While I’ve had tons of fun every day in Athens so far, my favorite activity was hiking through the Imbros Gorge in Crete.  

As one of the many incredible experiences CYA gives students here, we all went to Crete a few weeks ago to visit some archeological sites, look at some monasteries, and explore the history of the island.  I learned so much about Cretan history as well as got to walk through some amazing sites for my archeology class and see the ruins I was actually learning about.  On one of the last days, we all went on a hike through the Imbros Gorge, a beautiful land mass in the south of Crete.  As someone who had never really done any hiking before, I was excited to be outside and had no idea to expect from the day.  But even before we were halfway through the gorge, I was awestruck with the beauty and experience of walking among all these gorgeous rock formations.  The twists and turns, the trees, seeing the sky through little crevices of mountains up above–it all created such a serene picture that I absolutely loved.  Even though there were about 150 students walking through the gorge, as well as many other tourists making the hike, it was strangely quiet, which was so interesting to me as someone from a big city.  But there was something nice about how quiet everything was.  I got to look around and actually take in my surroundings.  As a whole, Greece has a different soundscape from cities in the US.  The more autonomous spaces in Athens are more based in the noise of cars and traffic, but even if you just walk down a street away from the main road, it’ll be much quieter.  Everyone lives in apartments here in the city, and the buildings are constructed so that they block out sound, which is pretty incredible to think about, because when walking you don’t even notice that the noise has dwindled.  On the islands, there’s a different kind of soundscape, it’s not as populated by traffic noises.  In Crete specifically, the wind was the loudest thing I heard, and I even saw it making waves on the water, it was that strong.  In the gorge, I could hear it whistling through the trees and the crevices in rocks, which was pretty cool to experience.  

 

On top of the beauty of the gorge, I was also walking through it with people that have now become some of my closest friends in this program.  Our trip to Crete was a mere three weeks after we all arrived in Greece, so we were all still getting to know each other, but the walk through the gorge gave us all a chance to talk and connect to each other.  There’s something about walking that makes people more willing to open up and share stories and identify with one another.  We talked about our colleges and universities back home, our families, experiences outdoors, sports, friends back home, families, and our favorite past times.  I had some of the best conversations of my life walking on those narrow paths, and when we all got back to Athens I came home with way too many bug bites for my liking, but some really strong friendships too, which made the bug bites pretty okay.