This is a story from around 7 years ago, from my journey over land to India, where we ended up staying in Greece for 3 months. A bit over 2 of them spend living in caves in Crete.
It was one of the most magical times of my life and we could easily have stayed longer! We did meet people there who had been on the same idea of going to India, but now already on their 5th year in the caves!
(Unfortunately I had a quite lousy camera at the time, but I will share the photos anyway without filter or editing.)
It all started on the main land Greece. We met first a couple of Swiss guys on bicycles, then a group of polish travelers, and being December we decided to all meet up a bit before Christmas in Athens, to have a gathering together for Christmas and New Years.
When the time came to meet up, more people had joined the idea and we were 12 people for the gathering. We decided together to board the ferry to go to Crete.
When we arrived at the port we opened up the big heavy Atlas the polish guy Lucasz was travelling with and as a bit of a gimmick took out a crystal necklace and dowsed the map for where we should go.
Magically all of us got reactions when the crystal came over an small village by the name of Mátala!
So we made a scouting mission to Mátala
In Matala we met two guys living in tents in the biggest cave (which naturally called the Big Cave) and they showed us around.
One cliff side in Matala is covered with ancient caves, presumably roman graves. The other cliffs behind the village are all dotted with natural caves with stone carvings, paintings and little objects left by the hippies who have stayed here through the times. Apparently Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell stayed here back in the days - Joni Mitchell's song "Matala Moon" is made here.
Matala is a touristic place in summer, but was more like a ghost town when we came in December.
Most of us quickly got convinced that it was a great place to stay. Just one guy really wasn't convinced at first, ironically the guy who stayed the longest of all of us in the end!
We all moved in to the Big Cave with John and Yvan to start with. Our first evening and morning:
We celebrated "Cretemas" with a mix of traditions and food from our different countries and a mix of olive and sage branches as a Christmas tree around a fire inside the cave (that was the best thing about the big cave, it was so big that you could easily have a good bonfire going inside without problems)
Then New Years with a huge bonfire and a sweat lodge on Red Beach, a beautiful secluded beach behind the caved hills
After Christmas and New Years, new people had arrived and the celebrations and cave life had brought us all together. We had a really nice community of a bout 20 in the highest points and nobody really wanted to leave.
It was a perfect place to spend the European winter, as the sun was shining and we were swimming in the breathtakingly clear sea.
It was a nice easy sustainable life. Each week there was a market in the nearby village, where we would go and play music to make a bit of money and then recycle loads and loads of vegetables and buy what else we needed with the money we made playing music. We also found some goods dumbsterdiving in the super market.
An old french guy living in the caves for, I don't know how long, showed us all the beautiful variety of wild edibles.
We got free access to a field of orange trees where the oranges were falling to the ground in astounding numbers; too much for the owners ever to eat by themselves and even all of us!
Villagers would come by and happily donate to us some of their proudly homemade olive oil, wine and raki. And we would all cook and eat together around the fire.
So food really wasn't a problem.
The caves provided excellent shelter and were always nice and warm all night, containing the heat from the sun. And their are lots of caves! We all started in the Big Cave, but slowly started moving out in separate caves, but still meeting up to eat together.
We made oil lamps of waste oil from the restaurant to light up the evenings.
The locals were friendly and welcoming. Police didn't bother us.
Life was not a problem.
A beautiful time of Community. All you really need is food shelter, freedom and community, so this was perfect ingredients for having some of the warmest, free'est and happiest times of our lives.
I was also lucky to have a commission of two big drawings which I worked on while staying in the caves. The conditions were perfect.
I believe that in times in our lives where we manage to follow the stream of life, in the moment, with no personal goals of gaining, but just simply living, taking part of life in all it's dance and rhythm, everything just falls into place perfectly and life will sustain you in magical ways.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all the people who shared this magical time with me.
And now for the rest of the pictures of cave life and Matala :)
And as a final my worn out shoes that I said goodbye to in Crete