Elafonsi Beach and Paleochora - October 26, 2023

Route for today marked in red

After breakfast at our hotel, our driver for today (George) picked us up at 9:00 AM.  We headed across the western end of Crete and then south toward Elafonisi Beach which is famed for its pink sand, created by the breakdown of very small pink shells into sand size grains, unique to two Cretan beaches and found rarely across the world.  

 

The drive took us through mountains, past many little villages, past gorges and many, many olive trees.  They estimate there are over 30 million olive trees on Crete.

 

When we arrived at the beach, George warned us that there is not a lot of pink sand left, supposedly because tourists illegally take it home as souvenirs (but more likely because it is constantly recirculated by the sea's action). But, there are now signs all over the beach warning not to remove any of the pink sand. 

We asked a couple of people about the pink color; one person said it comes from pink rocks that the tourists have stolen.  But rather than from rocks…the real explanation is below.

 

“The impressive pink color of the sand in Elafonisi originates from the so-called Foraminifera shellfishes, which, when they complete their life cycle, leave behind their reddish shells which are crushed in the white sand and mix with it to produce this unique pink color.”

 

After walking down to the beach and taking some pictures…trying to capture the patches of swirling and shifting pink sand, we drove to a nearby overlook to view another beach from above.  George suggested we visit a coastal town for lunch.  See Chris’s description below:

George and Chris

 

Our 25-year-old driver, “George” was a very studly and handsome (according to Connie) bodybuilder, very nice and accommodating but otherwise kind of dumb (his answers to all my questions were “I don’t know”). He drove those curvy mountain roads very fast which minimized our travel time, and he also took us to another remote seaside village facing Africa/Libya, Palaiochora, where we had a delicious wood fired lunch.”

Our pizza restaurant

After lunch we walked around Paleochora and Chris climbed to the 12^th century castle overlooking the city…I went part way up and then stopped to take pictures.

Castle Ruin

Overlooking the village of Paleochora on Crete's south coast

We took a different route part of the way home.  We passed by a lot of olive trees with their nets down for harvesting.  Click HERE to find out more about harvesting the olive trees.

Chris had us stop for a picture of one of the many typical limestone caves pockmarking the cliffs everywhere we drove in western Crete, some so large and deep they have not been fully explored.