Going to Crete? Don't let this happen to you
Wild scenes of an exit-by-water to famous Balos Beach had a social media moment
This is not a drill…
Seriously, wtf? Social media in Greece was gripped this week with scenes from an unceremonious exit of holidaymakers from a passenger boat arriving at the famous Balos lagoon in northern Crete.
According to the Greek website iefmerida, tourists “get off the ship and dive up to their necks to go to the beach.” Now, the crazy scenes appear to be a one-off, because apparently there is now some sort of floating platform that has been in place so that passengers disembarking the vessel don’t have to actually jump in the water to reach the shore.
And yet…
Why are literally boatloads of tourists being dumped off daily at one of the most pristine environments in the Mediterranean? Or should we say, once pristine.
A couple years ago we drove to the port of Kissamos in western Crete to board a boat to Balos. It was rough ride — big waves, lots of broken dishes, and not a great crowd.
Balos is famous for its wide lagoon and pink sand beaches. No hotels, no restaurants, nada except for the water, sand, surrounding mountains…and the daily arrival of tourists who actually do not belong there. Sun loungers and umbrellas do not belong there. The cigarette butts and plastic trash left by frankly piggy tourists, and their suntan oil floating in the water, do not belong there.
Balos is essentially like the Yosemite of Crete and slowly, or maybe rapidly, it is being destroyed. Letting tourists run amok this way at Yosemite or the Gorges du Tarn would be unthinkable. How the Greek tourism authorities can let this happen is beyond me — but it is ugly and it is not sustainable.
The Cretans are a proud people and rightly so, but they should be ashamed of themselves for letting a landscape of such natural beauty become despoiled through cheap, ill-managed touristic exploitation like this. Somebody needs to do better.
They say Balos lagoon is the part of the Europe’s Natura 2000 environmental network — really? Then maybe Europe needs to find a better nature protection network than a name on a piece of some Brussels bureaucrat’s paper.
Bottom line: Don’t be a part of the problem. Avoid Balos in Crete.
The epitome of negative tourism. Pam Price