Snorkeling in Crete

Although there’s plenty of beautiful sites and beaches on Crete and other Greek Islands, have you ever tried snorkeling in Crete.
There’s a whole brand new world, like finding a forth dimension of beautiful landscapes, colour and creatures to explore under the water. Feel like your hovering over an alien landscape, get that feeling of vertigo when you swim (fly) over a steep drop looking into the abyss wondering which strange creatures are looking up at you.

Having discovered this new world why not have a go at photographing it, my first attempt was a cheap underwater film camera, which got a few good results but required waiting for the film to be developed. Its a long wait to find that out of 24 pictures you only got the tail of one fish.

Next and current attempt at underwater photography was using an ewa marine d-am housing and a little nikon coolpix 2 mega pixel camera. The housing is like a posh waterproof bag with a flat glass lensport. I love this, its still a bit hit and miss with the aiming as its hard to see the view screen under the water. The good thing is that you can see your results as soon as your back on the beach, delete the less successful and try again.

Falasarna Wreck

On an excursion to Falasarna, we went to the ancient site there, parked in the car park, had a look around, got very hot and decided we needed to jump in the sea to cool down. We got the beach stuff from the car and walked through the brush towards the sea finding a small deserted pebble beach (see photo).


The rocks were very slippy and had to virtually crawl into the sea but was worth it, beautiful underwater scenery I swam to the right around the edge of the coast totally captivated by the views and getting the vertigo feeling swimming over the deep bits. Around the corner, out of sight of the beach, I suddenly came across a wreck, what an eerie experience, I wasn’t expecting that, I looked up couldn’t see the beach or anyone else in sight felt sort of uneasy like I shouldn’t be there. I took loads of pictures then headed back all excited to tell the better half all about it.

While I was away the better half was having her own unexpected surprise. Another couple had found the beach and completely stripped off and were doing the hands on hips walk around the beach. I was so excited about communicating my own adventures on my return that I didn’t notice the extra scenery.

The dry delivery of the phrase “look the other way John shes going to pick up a shell” will never be forgotten. No way I was going to say anything, those rocks were very hot and any man that can squat with his dangly bits resting on them was not to be trifled with.

The wife’s uncomfortably loud comment “If looked like that I’d wear extra clothes not less ” ensured that we had the beach to ourselves soon enough.
Anyway here’s some of the photos

Snorkeling At Drapanos

First visit here was on the boat trip from Almyrida harbour to see the sea caves and do some snorkeling, excellent trip.We returned by car later to the same spot. The drive down to the small inlet is not for the faint hearted but was worth it, there’s a taverna at the bottom with a car park and to be polite we had something to eat there. We only intended to have a sandwich but the owner didn’t speak English so the wife had to go into the kitchen and point at a few things. We ended up with quite a feast (which was lovely ) and had to wait a while before swimming.

No beach just a small concrete plinth, excellent snorkeling and scenery.

Here are a few more of my attempts at photography while snorkeling

Video taken snorkeling in Crete with my wonderful underwater camera April 2010

          

information on how to do underwater photography properly

http://uwpmag.com/

 

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