Daniel, September 27, 2011

 

 

Someone else who was at Matala steered me to your terrific site. Thanks so much for putting it together. Here is my experience of the place: I was heading east through Yugoslavia in July 1968, and, on the say-so of an Italian I’d met, gravitated to Matala. Upon arriving, a Canadian travel mate and I were promptly directed to a double cave, where two cheeky Brit girls were perched in the back. Ours was the ‘front’ cave, and we spread our sleeping bags atop funerary altars carved out of rough yellow rock.

Nights on the beach were music-filled. In town, the goat yogurt with honey was amazing, and the local café played Hendrix on the jukebox. I recall a scrawny longhair with a ringlet beard in a high cave that, I was told, had a generator and a stove, making him top dog there. The prettier girls seemed to orbit this man, who called himself Neptune.

 

Sadly, I also recall two Greek men raping a pretty Dutch girl. That made us all angry. I once asked a young woman staying in a cave what she lived on. She laughed, and said, ‘I pick grapes for a dollar a day. That’s enough to get by on here.’ After hanging out there most of that August, I flew back to Paris with 24 hours left before my plane took off, never to return. The place truly was magical.

 

Daniel