THERE IS MORE to Crete than the sunny, crowded beaches of the north coast.
When heat and torpor pall, lift your eyes to Mount Ida and the birthplace of Zeus or look west to where the White Mountains take a bite out of the sky. Beyond those glittering barriers life moves at a different pace. Small villages welcome travellers. They are easily accessible by local bus or hired car. Accommodation is cheap and readily available. And it is a walker's paradise.
Some energetic visitors catch a fleeting glimpse of this other Crete when they are bussed to the top of Samaria Gorge in the early morning and walk through a spectacular landscape to the sea at Agia Roumeli. Picked up by ferry, they are brought to Chora Sfakion and hurried back to the north coast. They leave behind a rock-strewn landscape and a people who, as one observer remarked, can be "hospitable to the point of insanity".
Between the mountains and the Libyan Sea is a land riven by precipitous gorges, Samaria being the best known. Others, such as Imbros, Aradena and Irini, offer nestling villages, pine-shrouded hills and more intimate surroundings.
During the heat of a summer day, shade in those deep clefts is a blessing. But, in the relative cool of spring and autumn, bare mountain peaks and exposed pathways linking coastal villages offer alternative pleasures.
People represent the area's beating heart. In a strange way it is like the west of Ireland. Swap Irish bogs for eroded rocks, rain on the wind for sun on your back and you uncover the courtesy and generosity of a people who struggled to survive.
Peter Trudgill fell in love with Sfakia and has written an evocative book about the village, its history and its inhabitants that has just been printed by Lycabettus Press. If you make your way to the south coast, you will understand his infatuation.
And, as you turn the pages in a quiet taverna, looking across an azure sea towards Africa, you can think of those less fortunate visitors on the north coast.
• Do you know any hidden gems? E-mail us at go@irish-times.ie