Day 5 and a Crazy Man Jumps in our Car

after a great nights rest, and still reeling from the previous days mishap @Preveli, we now faced a drive that I had been dreading since i decided we needed to go up to the Ardena Bridge.  Let me preface this by saying that before our first trip to Greece in 2013, I was petrified of mountain driving, i would literally get ill from the thoughts of all that space below us as we wound through very very small mountain roads with very little to keep us from going off into space.  by now, our third trip to the island, i am much more relaxed about it, and even occasionally peak over the edge at the view and admire just how high up we are.  this road, leaving Chora Sfakion and going up a vertical mountain with a slew of switchbacks and finally arriving at the top, is labeled one of the most dangerous roads in all of Greece.  I'm the dummy that wanted to see some stupid bridge over a stupid gorge.  let me be the first to congratulate myself for not only making it to the top, but also standing on the wood planked bridge of Ardena and looking over the edge, though the photo i tried to take did not turn out.

We then continued on the road to Agia Ionnis, which is supposed to be the highest village in all of Crete.  the road there took us through another tiny village, and not much else.  a lot of sheep and goats.  we passed this crazy white haired man on our way up, we thought, he looked quite out of place.  we arrived in the village and the road just ended.  we commented to ourselves that this would be a great place to hijack lost vacationers and sacrifice them to their cretan gods.  there was not a soul to be seen so we turned around to go back the way we came.

down the road and out pops the crazy white haired man, waving his arms and speaking in Greek very loudly.  We have no idea what he's saying, but JG picks out the name of the town we had driven through, which he repeats, and then without warning, hops in the backseat of our car.  We look at each other very nervously and continue driving down the winding road.  Back over the bridge of Death/Ardena, and on to the little village after.   finally as we near a small house in the village the man emphatically tells us something very important, which we have no idea what it is, so I slowed down and stop and he jumps out of the car and goes into the house.  WTF just happened????  We still don't know.  Now as fun as driving up the road to Ardena was, driving down it was just as hair raising, we did however make it down and back through Chora Sfakion and then our second hair raising trip, up the main road through the Imbros Gorge, very very pretty, but not as scary.  After a number of small villages, we finally made it over the mountain and began the slow but steady climb down to the north shore of the island.

We decided that we would just go to our hotel, so on we went through the tiny roads until we at last came out on the highway, and before you knew it, we were pulling up into the parking lot of the Porto Veneziano, the best hotel in all of Chania.  We rested and then walked around the old town for a bit, then took a little nap before having a wonderful meal at the Well of the Turk.  we called it an evening and slept like babies in our favorite hotel.