Snorkeling in Crete

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

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. 

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

For more information and research about the Falasarna wreck see this site The Forgotten Flottila

Snorkeling At DrapanosFirst 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

information on how to do underwater photography properly http://uwpmag.com/

4 Replies to “Snorkeling in Crete”

  1. Just thought you would like to know that we visited the site you mentioned and had a fabulous day yesterday snorkling over and around the wreck. So, many thanks for the information.

    Added to that had the lucky break to meet an Australian guy who was involved in the dig at the ancient site and was writing a paper on the wreck. He was surprised that we knew about it. He has researched it and the story goes: apparently it was an British landing craft from the 2nd world involved in the evacuation of Crete. It was moored there to evacuate the British and Australian forces stranded there. unfortunatley, it was spotted by a Germnan bomber plane. The plane came down and bombed but missed on the first attempt and was shot at by the the crew, it then returned and made a direct hit. There is no record of any deaths but we don’t really know. However, the plane was shot down on Falasarna beach and the pilot ejected. When the Germans arrived on the beach they shot the Australian soldiers responsible for shooting down the plane. The forces were never evacuated and were taken to a prison camp on the island where they stayed until the surrender. These details were from an old man who was a boy at the time and saw the whole thing.

    Great to know the history eh.

  2. Hi thank you for providing these wonderful photos… I am deffinately going to invest in a good under water camera after looking at what you have achieved… Ive just returned home from a two week snorkling hoilday in Lindos and saw a moray eel on the main beach by the jetty… I automatically became unsettled at the very site of a moray eel and got out of the water… I am aware they have a reputation for attacking divers… have you had any problems with them… or do you think it is wise to stay well out of their way.

    All tye best

    Guz

  3. The underwater cameras are brilliant fun, I take my lap top on holiday and download the new pics and video every day. The Moray eel on the photo above was from Lindos main beach but around the corner to the left, it was’nt so big so I was’nt too worried. I wouln’t advise putting your fingers too close or provoking them. The underwater camera is a great companion to the digital slr as I give it to the wife to take pictures with on land, keeping her interested in taking photos and also acting as a backup camera.

  4. Thanks so much for this post about the ship wreck. I am interested in the battle of Crete and subsequent evacuation and found this post as I was looking for snorkelling sites over planes. Without stumbling across this post, I would never have even known about this amazing place. The nudist anecdote also made me and my wife laugh a lot.

    I visited the site a couple of days ago and is probably the best snorkelling experience I have had. I was absolutely amazed at how much is there and how accessible it is (in terms of the depth, closeness to shore and sheltered site). It must have been so thrilling to find this by chance.

    For anyone interested in visiting the wreck, since the original post and the previous comments, the access to the beach is harder and I had to be quite determined. There is a lot of new fencing at and around the archaeology site. The route I eventually found was to go to the small church to the north of the site (for which I needed to go through a fence section that was tied together – which I took to mean was to allow access to the church). From there, there is a track between the church and the archaeology site and if you follow this it is possible to pick out a route to the beach that follows fairly close to the fence of the archaeology site.

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