Discreet Crete: exploring the Greek island’s gorges and ancient villages on a new eco-tour

Away from the bars and bustle, Crete’s spectacular White Mountains are opening up to sensitive and sustainable travel – with scrumptious food

‘Tonight there will be you and me and the goats,” my guide Vassia Mastrogianni explained as we began our car journey into Crete’s White Mountains. At the wheel was Antonis who, ominously, Mastrogianni had just introduced as “a very good driver.” It wasn’t long before I could see why, as the road became a tangle of ascending switchbacks and plunging valleys. It was the kind of road that would have caused a meltdown had I been the one driving.

We were headed for a remote mountain guesthouse in western Crete, where the deep creases of Samaria national park rise up to limestone crests more than 2,000 metres high before crashing into the southern coast. For half the year the White Mountains are slick with snow, but in summer the rocky summits are famous for their gleaming, milky complexion, continuing to give the appearance of snow long after it’s all but melted away.