Leaving the village of Zakros for day two of my E4 adventure, I couldn’t help but notice the state of decay of many of the village’s buildings. There’s a lot of history to this village, at least if the tourism office is to be believed, but to a trekker’s eye it seems at times a bit run down and poorly cared for.

Climbing the path up out of Zakros, though, is immediately lifting. No seriously, its pretty steep. Also uplifting in the spiritual sense, though, as I was walking for a while on an actual carpet of wildflowers as I gained elevation and headed towards the interior of Crete.

Fighting strong winds and weak knees, though, I was able to pretty well follow the E4 signposts until the trail dropped down into a small valley with an even smaller church, abutted by a beautiful fenced-in spring.

Carrying on from here over the poorly signposted but eerily pretty Psilo Kefali plain, the trail winds for several hours through an empty landscape marked only by the occasional windmill on the horizon. Eventually all beautiful things must end, though, and the trail drops down to the village of Ziros on the Amenochandradhes Plateau.

After rescuing this little guy from being stuck in the fence, of course.

Though the village of Ziros is nice enough, this is the first of what I would later realize were many road sections of the E4 in the east of the island. Occasional there are fields of clover to throw off the pack and take a rest, but for the most part you’re spending hours pounding pavement until reaching the little village of Vori over 11km away.

Vori was a lovely little village, perhaps the most picturesque I walked through on the entire trip. I was so frustrated with those 11km (~6.6mi) walking on the side of a paved road, though, that I barely even stopped to admire the place and don’t seem to have taken a single photo.

…Which is probably how I lost the trail? My day, number two on the E4, ended on a low note wandering through hilly farmland trying to find a campsite and a source of water. I finished the day camped on a beautiful hillside looking back towards Vori, perhaps more excited than ever in my life to have taken off pack and shoes and be settled in for the night.