Almost all beaches in south-west Crete are clothing-optional, except perhaps only central town beaches. Many of them are connected with famous E4 hiking trail, so you can walk between them… or maybe swim?
Well, I’m joking, Anidri and GLyko Nero beaches are quite far from each other. Glyko Nero Beach (Sweet Water Beach), as its name suggests, has some underground freshwater springs. Thus this place is ideal for camping. Just dig a half-meter hole in the send, if there are not any already, and you’ll get fresh cold water. Regardless, you won’t die from hunger or thirst there anyway, as there is also a tavern. As the beach is turned to the south and surrounded by high walls of steep rocks,
it can get very hot there unless there’s a strong breeze from the sea. But there are some trees providing good shade,
and also a plenty of umbrellas from the tavern.
We spent most of the time swimming.
The sea water is very clean and has intense dark-blue color.
Unless you hit the freshwater spring at the water edge, it is also very warm; and certainly, this beach has one of the clearest waters I’ve seen.
At night, thanks to the cliffs surrounding the beach, it is very quiet and dark there, because no light comes from neighbouring town. Perfect to watch stars! As there was no moon, they were so bright that Milky Way even reflected in the water! And when we looked in the water, we saw that it was full of flashing “stars” itself. Bioluminescent plankton was so abundant (at least in the end of September, when we were there), that anytime I moved my hand in the water there were flashes around, as these organisms respond to mechanical disturbance with glowing. This is why they also flash a lot, when waves break onto the shore. I would highly recommend to swim at night (with goggles) to see how the water glows around you and your swimming buddy.
However, be careful with the above mentioned cliffs – don’t build you camp to close to them, because once in while some rocks were falling down, sometimes because of the goats jumping. They like coming to this beach to drink fresh water in those man-made holes, and you can see their incredible ability to walk on nearly vertical cliffs.
and then were diving from them.
To get to Glyko Nero beach you may use a small former fishing boat which comes from Hora Sfakion directly to the tavern twice per day at about 10:00 and 17:00, or like we and many hikers, come by E4 hiking trail. From Hora Sfakion, you can also first go by car in the direction of Loutro till the sign E4 Glyko Nero/Sweet Water Beach. However you get there, you’ll surely love this beach!
After eating in a tavern in Agia Roumeli, we went to look for a camping place. A small pinery just left of the isthmus of the Samaria River was already occupied by half a dozen campers, so we continued looking for a place for our tent further on the beach in the dark… and we found it! An entire cave had been waiting for us exclusively 🙂 What was especially pleasing was that the floor in the cave was of fine dry soft sand, whereas the beach itself was mainly covered by pebbles, many of tennis ball size, very inconvenient to walk on. The cave had accumulated the warmth of the day, so not only did we not need to go inside our tent, we even did not need to cover! Watching the starry sky from the cave felt like in a cinema. The only problem was that the noise of waves echoed in the cave and thus doubled, so don’t expect quiet, but the sound of sea is your thing, you’ll be happy.
Active Naturists 