So I take myself down into the village of Xora Sfakíon, Sfakía for short. On the outskirts a couple of depressed-looking places advertising ‘rooms' or a taverna, but I see nothing that says to me ‘stop, this is the place for you to stay!'

In the middle of the village is the tourist harbour, where the boats go from in the summer, with postcard-and-souvenir-shops and closed-down cafés; at one end there's a real working harbour where a couple of real fishing boats are doing something that looked a little bit business-like; at the other end is the bathing beach, where camping and nudity are forbidden ...

In the middle but further up from the harbour is a delightful cluster of houses huddled together cheek-by-jowl, some in ruins, one of which provided me with the fig-tree I needed for shelter to answer a suddenly-urgent call of nature; I never realised how practical fig-leaves must have been in the Garden of Eden - a good size, thick as leather ... I even nicked a baby fig from the abandoned garden ...

In the post-card shop I ask about Loutrou, the village along the coast which for some reason I have identified as some kind of goal for my stay; she says

"yes, it's nice, there are probably a few people still there. You can't drive there, but the boat goes several times a week. It might even go tomorrow, yes, Monday's a good day..."