Driving in Crete

Driving in Crete was great. I love driving in foreign countries. (My experiences in England and Australia were varied and invariably hilarious. Like the time when I pulled up the wrong side of a tollbooth, could not figure out how to open the window and had to get out of the car to deliver the money to the tollbooth on the other side.)

We rented a car in Crete and had to get a taxi to take us from the hotel back to the airport to pick up the car. In the taxi cab, driving through the impossibly narrow roads of Heraklion, the driver expressed a little concern when we told him that he was driving up to pick up our rental car at the airport.

“In America,” he expressed in halting English, “you drive in the middle. DON’T drive in the middle in Crete.” We smiled and said that we would follow his advice, although I had not yet figured out exactly what he was talking about.

We picked up our car, a tiny Citroen 1.1, at the Avis lot, shoved our luggage into the back seat (we would discover later that the car was actually a four-door!), were talked into purchasing the supplemental insurance (“Just incase!”) and we headed out of the lot, into the pouring rain for our drive across the island.

It was instantly obvious what the taxi driver had been talking about. As Dan merged carefully onto the highway, car after car passed dangerously around us, heading into on-coming traffic and swerving elegantly back into the lane before any head-on collision occurred. If we had been driving in the US, someone surely would have died, but in Crete, you do not drive in the middle of your lane, you drive off in the shoulder, or at least as far in the shoulder as you can get. That way, the tiny little Cretan cars can squish between you on the shoulder and the car in the other lane without having to slow down. Even on the terrifyingly high and winding mountain roads, be prepared to slow down, ease into the ditch and let the car behind you pass.

Our little car took us all around Crete, on roads, I am sure this car was not made to traverse. But the little Citroen made it, and we returned it to the airport with half a tank of gas left, windshields covered in mud, and the glove compartment full of empty coke bottles.