At this time of the evening, around 6.00pm in late September, the light of the sinking sun, viewed from our French windows or out on the veranda, for it’s only around an hour now until it sets behind the hills to our right, is quite magical as it throws into sharp contrast the shadows on the two hills that sit a few kilometres across the valley to the south of us. Even though they’re that far away, the bells of the local herd of goats are clearly audible, and the individual shadows of thousands of olive trees are pin-prick sharp. The sun, just for half an hour or so, sends its shafts across the northern slopes of those two hills owing to its prescribed arc in the daily sky during this season, and then it’s gone.

To the left of both hills, we watch the glistening last rays twinkling on the vast Lybian Sea, and further to the right between those two hills we can just make out another patch of sea, and, through that gap, as if positioned there deliberately, the island of Chrissi is clearly visible on days when the humidity is low enough to permit distant vision. It’s an island that has long drawn the interest of sun-seeking visitors and, when we first moved here in 2019, six or seven boatloads of lobster-red, shorts-wearing, sunglass-toting sun seekers would ply their way there from Ierapetra sea front throughout the summer season, their rucksacks perched between their knees as they sat aboard the vessels for the hour-long trip. These folk would be bussed here from other locations like Agios Nikolaos and Elounda, maybe even further away too, their coaches would park up a little way along the sea front from the harbour where the boats were tied up, and the reps would shepherd their flocks of human pleasure seekers as they walked in teams along the promenade to the area where they’d go aboard.

It always used to put me in mind of my ten years as an excursion escort on Rhodes when I saw this. How often had I stood at the door of a coach, waving my clipboard, or walked from the vehicle to some embarkation point, during those years? How often had I boarded an excursion boat with my guests and eagerly awaited for the onboard bar to open so as to pick up an iced coffee to sip while we made the crossing, or cruised to the first stop on a ‘bay to bay’ excursion? More often than I could count now, in retrospect.

These days, happily, there is only one of those six boats still making the crossing daily all throughout the summer season. Each of those vessels would carry two or three hundred passengers in the high season of July and August, which meant that Chrissi Island would be overrun by human bodies for several hours every day for months on end. 

The boats would tie up on the South side of the island, and the guests would traipse across the few hundred metres from the South to the North coast, where they’d experience paroxysms of delight as its pristine, white sandy beach came into view before them. On the paradisaic beach of Chrissi there was back then a plethora of umbrellas and sun loungers, along with a small bar, where a diesel generator would chug away all day long, keeping the drinks cool in the refrigerators that had been shipped over there to service the thirsty hedonists. Hundreds of bodies would roast all day before their owners would wend their weary ways back across the island for the trip back to Ierapetra and hence to their coaches for the journey back to their accommodation. Each guest would go back with their mind mulling over how beautiful had been the unspoilt and unbuilt-up environment within which they’d been privileged to spend the day.

Chrissi Island was a world away from anywhere they’d ever been, more often than not.

The problem was, the very fact that so many thousands would traipse across the island on an annual basis was threatening to destroy the very reason for making the visit. The tons of rubbish that insensitive tourists would leave behind continually would take a gargantuan effort to clear up at the end of each season. The delicate natural balance of the unique environment on that island was being thrown out of kilter ever more with the increase of tourism year on year. The flora and fauna there was under serious threat.

So it was that a couple of years ago the local powers that be, in an effort to stop any further desolation of the natural environment on Chrissi took the decision, rightly in my humble opinion, to stop this succession of daily human invasions. Starting last year, no boats were going to be allowed any more to tie up on the makeshift jetty on Chrissi Island, and no sun beds, umbrellas or beach bars at all would be set up on its tropical-looking beach. The only excursions that would be permitted, at least for a number of years in order to allow the natural environment to hopefully make a recovery, would be boats that would anchor a few hundred metres off from the beach, while their occupants could dive from the boat and those who were strong enough swimmers might make their way across to the beach for a while, but there would be no facilities there, no encouragement for people to linger for too long, else they would return with a serious case of sun stroke no doubt.

All these thoughts raced through my mind as I gazed appreciatively and in no small wonder upon the indescribable beauty of the Cretan countryside under that late evening sun, as its rays put on the best of all light shows in the final hour of a late September day.

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Here’s just one single photo for you. Do you like it? (Warning: trick question):

I used to like it, I have to admit. I took it one baking hot morning as I stood with a bunch of day-trippers on the stone quay at the far end of St. Paul’s Bay in Lindos, Rhodes, back when I was still working as an excursion escort. There was a short overcrowded stretch of sandy beach right beside that quay; still is, of course, and, while we waited for our vessel to arrive at around 9.15am (the boat that would be our temporary home for the next seven hours while we chugged along the coast, stopping off at various bays for all the guests to enjoy a swim in the warm, clear waters of the Aegean Sea) this young woman drifted past, having settled herself into that inflatable flamingo, reading a book as she did so, not a care in the world, I imagined.

As the time has passed since I took that shot, my whole point of view about inflatable plastic ‘accessories’ has gone through something of a revolution, an awakening even. OK, so it was not so likely that in that particularly secluded bay that such a feather-light pleasure aid would fly away in the wind, but I have since seen rubber rings, inflatable beach balls and li-los taking off far too often as their neglectful owners have forgotten how light they were and left them unattended while a gust of wind grabbed them and whisked them out to sea. Once the breeze takes one of these inflatable plastic environmental disasters there’s precious little that can be done to catch it. How many times have I tried to swim after some kid’s bouncy blow-up ring or beach ball, only to give up several hundred metres off from the beach, having failed to make any impression on the distance between us? More than I care to remember. Many’s the time when I’ve only had just about enough puff to get back to the beach myself, feeling well depressed about yet more plastic pollution on its way out to sea to probably cause the death of some fish, turtle or other innocent, hapless sea creature.

I’m sorry if I upset anyone here, but to manufacture li-los, beach balls, inflatable armbands, or anything at all that people might want to blow up while on a breezy beach is the height of  irresponsibility in my book. I shudder when I see people arriving on the beach clutching all those awful feather-light plastic inflatable accessories, each one a disaster waiting to happen. A couple of years ago, one of the major UK tour operators ran a TV ad for their summer packages in which they actually used computer wizardry to spell out a whole sentence using various plastic inflatables, all apparently spread across the surface of the sea just off from a stupendously beautiful-looking beach, inviting people to take one of their wonderful summer breaks. That ad only ran for a short while and I like to think that the company that ran it withdrew it after too many complaints from people concerned about the environment. If that was the case, bravo to those who made the effort to complain.

In these environmentally aware days, when we’re being told again and again about the dangers of plastic in the natural world around us, doesn’t it seem rather odd that millions of tons of lethal plastic crap (for want of a better word) is littering the beaches of the world every single day? I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that an alarming percentage of that stuff is getting taken by the wind and blown out to sea also on a daily basis. 

If you’re going to the beach, I’m sure you and your kids can do without a li-lo, a blow-up ring or inflatable flamingo, surely. If not for yourselves, think about what all that stuff is doing to the sea life on our delicate planet when it gets taken from your hands by the breeze. Remember Happy Feet and the plastic retainer for a six-pack of beer cans, or whatever they call those things? It’s all about educating both ourselves and our families, I suppose.

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In the time it’s taken me to write this post, the sun’s set behind the hills in the West to our right, those hills that surround the magnificent Lasithi Plateau, so near to us and yet so far, owing to the precarious roads and tracks that lead up there from this side of that mountain range. Twilight, or as it’s called in Greek – liko’fos [λυκόφως] – is now upon us and little lights across the landscape are just beginning to twinkle as the natural light ebbs away into the darkness. There’s no moon at the moment, so the stars will be impossibly vivid tonight as we’ve no cloud cover at all and the humidity is low. I allow myself a nostalgic smile at the word likofos, because there was a taverna with that name just above our favourite beach when we used to take holidays on Skiathos. It’s on the path running down to Megali Ammos (Big Sand) beach, or used to be when we went there, which was some decades ago now. In fact, I notice that on Tripadvisor it is still there (just looked), but posted under the English name, Twilight, but when we used to go there it was only known by its Greek name.

Ah well, time to get up and do something. 

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