Unexpected surprise

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The meeting point was outside of the Toplou monastery. And although Easter was close and we were at one of the most famous monasteries of eastern Crete, our little gathering had nothing to do with religion. Our intentions were purely recreational and our objective was to cross a canyon and enjoy our Sunday hiking!

The old windmill was the first thing that drew my attention and after a few more pictures of the church we were ready to go.

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The canyon was short but very beautiful and pretty much unknown. Although I had been to the area many times before, I had never suspected the existence of this trail.

The goats, on the other hand, are present in all the hikes in Crete and always curious about the weird humans that walk under the hot sun :)

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Apparently this canyon is a geologically significant site and the rock formations are kind of special. They are called Tafoni, a word that I had never heard before! After a little googling I found out that this kind of formations can be found in many places of the world but it was the first time for myself :)

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But what really blew my mind was the water that welled up from the rocks. This is a very dry area and water is very, very scarce. The landscape on that end of the island is almost a desert and that water was a wonderful and mostly unexpected surprise!

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The end of the gorge was at the sea but we stopped a few meters before the beach. The pits with the water took our full attention and then it was time to go back before the heat gets unbearable!

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I took those pictures on the 1st of April 2018, only five days after my first post here and somehow they slipped my mind and I never shared them before!

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_{The camera that I used is a Canon EOS 7D with an EF-S 15-85mm lens attached. I edited the photographs in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic}

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All the pictures and the words are mine.

Thank you for reading and if you want to know more about me you can check out my introduction post.

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