Finding the water source near Falasarna
On a sunny winter day, I took a short trip on my trusty old Tempo sit-on-top kayak and went for a paddle from Southern Falasarna.
Mostly I just wanted to go out on this beautifully calm day and soak in some winter sun and do some swimming along a rock shelf.
As a starting point, I picked the little beach by Prasonissi island, near Alikia cafe South of the small port in Falasarna.
To borrow an expression from the Greek language, I was looking to find a couple of points of interest along the way.
One is the fountain of youth, as we affectionately call it. It’s a freshwater spring, with water flowing underground from the mountain above and coming out at sea level. This water is naturally cool all year-round.
I paddled along the coastline and not far from the starting point, there was the spring, water freely and relatively copiously flowing from the rocks.
I remember coming here during a summer heatwave a few years back. Outside temperature was near 40°C. What better activity than going kayaking on a day like that! We found some solace around the spring, where I measured the freshwater mixing with the sea in a rock pool at a cool 18°C.
Today was much milder. I measured the sea temperature only at the start, 21°C. Not bad for December, only three weeks away from the winter solstice. The air was a similar temperature. But the complete lack of wind emboldened the sun to irradiate an exuberant warmth. I was paddling gently and I was sweating.
The second point of interest along here is a small cave. It has a low passage for an entrance and a round chamber with a ring of rocks beneath a narrow opening to the sky above.
The only way to go in from the water is swimming, and it is only for the brave. You time the push of the small wave and you keep your head low, just by the surface, or even better below the surface. Today however the wave was not so small. The swell was raucous, most of the time covering the whole entrance and regularly hitting the rock arch above the low opening.
I stayed to observe the swell for a while. I hesitated for a few seconds but decided to swim in the open, over the rock shelf.
There’s a church, as there always is, at the end of a dirt road ending nowhere else. The church sits atop the cliffs, overlooking an elongated and not especially extensive half-moon bay. The vertical walls are punctuated by a few rocks close to the coastline. Around the Northern tip of the bay, a few metres underwater, a flat rock shelf juts out, forming a sharp corner, like an enormously magnified prehistoric stone tool. Then the drop into the abyss, another vertical cliff, this one below the surface, mirrors the landscape just above.
The tip of a bay is often a gathering point for fish. A rubber boat with three fishermen approached as I was getting ready to go in the water. Each of them with a line, all pointing in the same direction towards the shelf.
The sea felt warm, welcoming, clear. I have never experienced less than great visibility underwater here. The swimming was good, peaceful, but the fish was keeping away. A few breams, the odd parrotfish. Oddly no small fish to be seen. I kept on swimming for a while, mask and snorkel, swimming hat, rope to tow the kayak behind me. Today you couldn’t get cold even if you wanted to, but I didn’t want to overdo it. After some twenty minutes of admiring the different rock formations underwater, I was done. I got back on the kayak and paddled towards the start, now with more confidence, passing as close as possible to the shoreline and dancing with the swell, playing in the eddies around the coastal rocks and the narrow gaps.
The sun kept shining as I landed, towed the kayak up the shore, soaked some more warm rays on my chest. Strictly no wetsuit!
All in all, a satisfying winter sea kayaking and swimming day on one of the many marvellous stretches of coastline in West Crete.
