On the 24th of September a group of Swedish geocacher left Landvetter airport in Gothenburg to travel to Chania and on to Almirida – our temporary geocaching HQ. In this expedition the following geocachers took part: Hallén, TMR68, pljung, jetteråttan, Ballox, matrialaren, lipk, bodil54, erika53, -Bacon-, LHCper, Kråkan.
The blog “Halléns Geocachingäventyr” (The Geocaching Adventures of Hallén) is normally written in Swedish, but this is a special edition to give an international audience the possibility to read a summary about our Cretan adventure! More from this tour of Crete will be published in Swedish – day by day.
I would like to send a big THANK YOU to all CO:s of geocaches in Crete on the behalf of the entire Team Sweden for making our expedition so successful and interesting.
Day 1. Arriving
After landing we went to our rental cars, but first we made a detour to the first cache, just outside the airport. After that we had to go direct to the hotel.
Day 2. A geocaching tour in the footprints of the Minoans
The day started with an attempt on a FTF on the multi cache “To Limanaki” but it had been found one day earlier, but we got our first multi on Crete. After that we made new plans to find the Unknown cache of “Knossos”. To find it you need to visit four other Minoan sites so this was a promising cache to my liking! In the evening we also had an event on the beach. The following multislide presentation will give you an impression from this first day of traveling on Crete.
Day 3. Churches, caves and a feeling of Christmas
Our day started at “Skotini Cave (Dark cave)- St. Nikolaos Chapel”, a place with a dreadful history. It continued with visits to several small churches, some from the early Byzantine time –interesting!
We also experienced a powerful thunderstorm and a flash-flood at the cache “Silver Spring Moundros”. At “St Nikolaos church” one could get a feeling of Christmas…! Let’s watch the multislide presentation from the third day on Crete.
Day 4. Hunting of cache types!
On the fourth day on Crete we went out to hunt down the remaining cache type on Crete – a Where I Go. “Tour Georgioupolis” was the closest to us so we started our day in this small village. It was a nice walk and we also found a unknown cache “The Secret War Tunnel” and a traditional. Now we had found 6 different cache types on Crete – great work!
Day 5. Towards the south coast
At 5.47 we went to the event ”Super moon watching”, just outside our hotel. But clouds made it impossible to see any moon….!
The aim this day was the Earth Cache “Psiloritis-Massiv *** Psiloritis mountains” but we went on a detour, and that detour created a new plan….
Day 6. Into the Imbros Gorge
Today we made a hike in the Imbros Gorge, beautiful nature and also a place with lots of history. It was this way several thousands of British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers during World War II was evacuated. After having suffered defeat at the hands of the Germans, troops retreated to beaches on the south coast where they were rescued by waiting ships and transported to Egypt. It was interesting to see this place in real life.
Day 7. A visit to Heraklion
Urban caching in historical urban areas is great and in Heraklion there are plenty of history from different ages, not the least the Venetian times. It was a good hike in the city this day. The day ended with an event: ”Farwell Crete!”.
Day 8. The final day in Crete
Today we had to travel back home to Sweden, but first we had many hours of geocaching! We started with a hike along trail from Gouverneto Monastery down to Katholiko. It was a great place to walk in, especially the “Bear Cave”. A holy site since many thousands of years! We also made a visit to the old city of Chania before going out to the airport and our flight late at night.
Halléns Geocachingäventyr 
Fina bilder som ger goda minnen från en super resa med trevlig kamratskap.