At the hotel reception desk, there was a brochure for a company called Adventure Bikes advertising bicycle tours. There were about 5 different tours, and they specifically highlighted that the bikes were Scott brand. I, being no fool, asked the receptionist on duty to call and book a tour for me. She did, but for some reason started speaking to them in English, and then just handed the phone over to me. The thing was, each of the tours shown in the brochure and on the website took place on its own strictly specified day. And since I had been nursing the idea for quite a while, I was only able to sign up for our last day in Crete, Saturday, when there was a tour that more or less suited me. I should have called earlier instead of being an indecisive wimp. On the other hand, we had been busy before that — driving around, and before that we were acclimatizing, so let it be as it turned out — the main thing is that it worked out.
I had almost never spoken English on the phone. It's not an easy thing to do, but if the person on the other end isn't a native speaker or some Indian-sounding guy, but rather an average person who has studied and knows it reasonably well, you can communicate, albeit with some asking to repeat things.
Anyway, I booked the tour, and on Saturday morning a minibus with a bike trailer arrived at my hotel to pick me up. As it turned out, I was the last one who needed to be picked up, so we rolled off towards the mountain. In the front seat of the minibus sat a burly middle-aged guy and a relatively young girl. These were the organizers — the guy was the owner and later drove behind us in the car, while the girl was the tour guide on the road and rode a bike in front of us. In the back seats sat a few Germans and a Russian guy with his son. We rode with hellish merriment: the folks in the front seat were loudly shouting all sorts of edgy jokes for the whole cabin to hear. Considering that while doing this the dude was looking at the girl or glancing back at us, and steering with one finger, without looking at the road, my eyes even bulged a little — I had zero desire to fly 200 meters down off the serpentine.
Later, though, I decided that I should enjoy life anyway, and started to keep up the conversation to the best of my knowledge. Actually, I liked the tour organizers right away — I myself love to make a killer joke. So when the topic turned to the fact that the girl knew German better than English, I announced that I only knew one word in German — Scheiße. All in all, strange as it may seem, we didn't tumble into the abyss and successfully reached the top of the mountain, which was our destination. The thing is, these tours aren't about pedaling, they're about rolling. That is, they drive you up the mountain, and from there you just have to be quick enough to hit the brakes.
The organizer's girlfriend, who I had spoken with on the phone, was already waiting for us on the mountain. She prudently collected the dough in advance, to the tune of a not-insignificant 35 euros for a couple of hours of riding. By the way, this was pretty much the last of my money — I only had 5 euros left, which came in very handy later on.
We were handed our helmets and bikes (reserved in advance in the right size), and told that we needed to shift gears gently, brake smoothly with the rear brake, not go too fast, and follow the guide. I asked her later what her name was and where she was from. It turned out she was from the Czech Republic, and her name was Alena (with an "e", not a "yo"), to which I revealed that my sister's name was Alina, and mine was Vladislav. Naturally, such a name is familiar to her.
Rolling down the mountain is fun and pleasant, only your hands get tired from braking. For the first 10-20 minutes we just rolled, then we had to pedal a bit, but nothing lethal. We rode through the Gipari gorge, and stopped in the middle to gawk at a system of small waterfalls, for some reason with pipes, and a chapel inside the rock. Also tied up there was a huge dangerous bird, looking like a black vulture. I have no idea why, but it clearly could have left the gawking onlookers with savage scars if it had gotten loose.
After filling our bottles with clean water and taking a breather, we rolled on until we reached a tavern above Lake Kournas. Not the one I'd been to before, but a closer one, with an equally fantastic view of the lake, though. The tavern itself was decorated with Native American motifs: a thatched roof, various idols, and world-music-style muzak setting the right mood. I ordered freshly squeezed juice, and on top of that they brought us watermelons and melons, citing hospitality. Thanks, I guess, but the juice cost 3.5 euros instead of the usual 2.5 or 3. If you multiply that by the number of bikers, it's clear where the money for hospitality comes from. In general, it's amazing how everything people do is based on camouflage and presenting things as better than they actually are, and the Cretans are no exception.
After the tavern, we rolled off to the nearby town of Georgioupoli to return the bikes to the company's base. Afterwards, the owner started dropping us off at our hotels, and I chatted with him a bit. He told me he was originally from Zimbabwe, but his parents were from Crete. He mentioned their deranged dictator Robert Mugabe, and how black Africans have a pathological desire to hold onto power at all costs. Then he said he'd moved back to Crete a few years ago, explaining that in life you constantly have to change things up so you don't stagnate. To which I replied that circumstances themselves force him to change his life — life in Zimbabwe is no picnic right now, especially for white people, who have more money but are hated and restricted by laws from the blacks.
Then we talked about how dozens of types of spices grow wild in Crete, and how we once waited a long time for his minibus during a rest stop because he was picking leaves from some bush on the side of the road. Locals, the talkative Zimbabwean informed me, often gather spices just like that, if they can be bothered.
By the way, I promised to tell you how many olive trees there are in Crete. The hospitable organizer told me about this too, and I replied that probably only olives grow in Crete. To which he took a little offense, and said that everything grows in Crete, including thickets of cannabis, i.e., hemp aka marijuana. And the answer to the riddle about the number of trees is 35 million. There are three types of them — plains, hilly, and high-mountain ones, at least that's what the dude said.
So by four in the afternoon I made it back to the hotel. Overall, the bike tour is excellent, a pity it's short, and a bit pricey. It's especially cool that such awesome people organize it. As for Alena, I pretty much fell in love — she has a low, sexy voice and my favorite short anime-style haircut. However, you're unlikely to catch her there anymore — she'll surely return home to the Czech Republic, it seems she was doing some sort of internship in Crete. Nevertheless, if you need a bike rental or a bike tour, go ahead and call Adventure Bikes. (Advertisement).