Alabaster Bones

"Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation." - Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat Pray Love)

Once upon a time, a mighty king - or maybe a queen - ruled over Crete from a shining palace of alabaster, a sprawling labyrinth of workshops, magazines (storerooms) and royal bed chambers bordering a central square where 17,000 Minoans passed their days painting colourful frescoes of bull-leapers, making enormous terracotta amphorae to hold the honey and wine they produced and drawing perfumed baths for the queen. Fast-forward 4000 years, and a young Cretan woman pours bottled water over the stones, washing away the dust so her twenty-three-year-old Canadian friend can see the colours.

"Most of Knossos was made of alabaster supported by wooden beams," Elena told me. Even after several millennia, you could still see fragments of the original pillars gleaming like young snow in the sunlight. I'm surprised half the Minoans didn't go blind. "The parts that weren't were built out of coloured stones carefully selected and arranged for aesthetics." Beneath the wet shine where Elena had poured the water, I could see a mosaic of burnt sienna, apricot, flesh-pink and blood-red. "You can see the darker ones where the fire burned the palace." Elena pointed out a deep crimson tile, one corner of it charred black.

The Minoans were the oldest recorded civilization in Europe, and the ruling power on Crete from the Aegean Bronze Age until around 1300BC. "What happened to them?" I wanted to know, my eyes bound by the scorch-marks. "War?"

"No one knows for certain," Elena told me. "War is possible but unlikely. The Minoans were a peaceful people, although forensic analysis of the bones of children found up the hill prove they practiced human sacrifice. It probably wasn't an earthquake either, even though Crete gets the most earthquakes in the Mediterranean. There have been two major earthquakes in the past few years which destroyed Heraklion's city centre, but left Knossos standing. The Minoans were skilled architects. Our best guess is a volcanic eruption from Thera. Skeletal remains have been found still at their pottery wheel or in bed together. Whatever it was, the Minoans never saw it coming."

While I sipped my iced cappuccino, Elena told me that as a teenager she had been given the job of cleaning the bones of one of the royals' pet monkeys imported from Egypt. "Since then," she said, "I don't like to eat meat."

Elena's father was the Chief Guard of Antiquities at Knossos. As a result, she'd literally grown up here. It wasn't until she'd been assigned an essay in elementary school on where she lived that she began to understand Knossos Palace was not hers. She remembered playing in the dirt next to the archaeologists as a young girl and unearthing a tiny blown-glass bottle, inside of which experts later found traces of perfume.

It normally costs about €12 to enter the site, but because Elena was as much a fixture here as the giant amphorae, we were given free admission. On the way in, her father gave me as a souvenir a boat anchor of an encyclopedia on the Minoans, and I got a tasty iced coffee and private tour out of the deal.

"Knossos was around 1000 years before the Acropolis was built," Elena went on, "and probably had the first theatre, trade port and customs house in Europe." She pointed to the drainage ducts on either side of the walkway. "They also had running water - which still works today when it rains - and natural air conditioning."

I felt it when we entered what was thought to be the throne room, a blast of cold air that chilled the sweat on my skin and raised goosebumps on my arms. "We still don't know how they did it," Elena addressed my unspoken question. "Some kind of specialized stonemasonry that cooled and circulated the air. If we could harness that kind of brilliance today we would save enough energy to power major cities.

"And speaking of energy," Elena changed tacts, "this room is thought to have the most spiritual vibe of anywhere on Crete. I know many women who had been trying for years to have children. They came to sit in this throne room, and one month later they were pregnant."

I got out of there as quickly as possible.

"Knossos must have been something to see in its prime," I mused aloud as Elena and I sat on a bench near the ancient amphitheatre. I was imagining the colours - the bright red and turquoise frescoes, the gold stone mosaics and black and white alabaster pillars - and the exotic menagerie of animals - monkeys and lions and horses and the Minoans' sacred bull.

"Watch out for the pigeon," Elena nodded behind me and I turned, only to realize that by 'pigeon' she actually meant 'peacock' - a vibrant royal-blue male with a lush purple and green tail and natural jewelled crown atop his head. My gaze shot back to Elena, startled. "The Minoans traded a lot of things that we still have on Crete today," she read my spinning thoughts yet again. "This island is closer to Africa than it is to Athens."

Well, I thought, that explains the heat. Normally I didn't mind it, even thrived in it, but the sun here was like a white-hot branding iron. Elena had made sure I was wearing a hat and plenty of sunblock when we arrived at the site, and still my bare shoulders were red. My hands were shaking as I drained my third water bottle of the day. Yesterday I'd made the mistake of taking no water at all on my horseback ride in the mountains, and had arrived back at my apartment with a blistering dehydration headache that lasted well into the next morning (granted the several shots of raki and battery-acid wine could have also contributed).

I took a walk on the beach to cool down when Elena dropped me off, removing my sandals to let the waves lick my bare feet. I walked to the local market to pick up a few essentials: apples, instant coffee, milk and a tiny bottle of raki in case I felt like having a drink in my room. I chose a homemade strawberry-flavoured variety, naively thinking the sweetness would make it more drinkable. Anyone who had a vineyard in Crete was allowed to produce raki. Distilled from the must leftover after the grapes have been pressed to make wine, raki is often referred to as 'legal moonshine', the homemade variety affectionately nicknamed 'lion's milk' or 'milk of the brave', as it is said to contain up to 90% alcohol. I would have been better off opting for the mass-produced factory raki, which is dumbed down for tourists.

I also bought a loaf of fresh bread, butter and honey. Wine, honey and olive oil seem to be the Holy Trinity of the Mediterranean. So far the best olive oil and wine I'd had was in Croatia, but the best honey, by a landslide, was on Crete. Traditionally flavoured with pine and thyme, Cretan honey had a unique richness that was unlike anything I'd ever tasted, and had been used as the main sweetener here since ancient times. Glaukos, son of the legendary King Minos, is said to have fallen into a giant pitho of honey and drowned. Some bodies, according to Herodotus, were buried in honey. I could think of worse ways to go.

I looked at a few factory jars that were closer to a portion that would be reasonable for me, but ultimately sprang for a large plastic container of less expensive (and better quality) homemade honey. It would keep for years, the shop owner assured me. The natural herbal additives prevented it from crystallizing. Whatever I didn't use I could take home, as long as I made sure the plastic jar didn't explode in my luggage. Together with the bottle of olive oil I'd taken from San Rocco, that could be a literal recipe for disaster.

I stopped at a beach bar for sustenance on the way back to my guesthouse. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and was still feeling weak from the stifling heat of Knossos. I was very aware of my bare feet, still grainy with wet sand, as I put down my grocery bags and sat in one of the brown wicker chairs under a thatch roof. I am a staunch believer in the opinion that there is no better meal to be had than the one taken in bare feet, close enough to the ocean to feel the spray. While I stuffed my face with a Pina Colada and a juicy, football-sized gyro (they put fries in their gyros here), I heard the bartender tell three girls in bikinis that the ice cream cones they'd just ordered were on the house. One of them tried to object, and the bartender waved a dismissive hand. "Just keep smiling!" He implored. What is it with the Greeks and smiling?

When I approached the bar to pay, he said he'd seen me on the beach yesterday and the day before. "You were out in the sun too long," he told me. "Please, go inside. You are too white." He asked where I was from, and then asked if I was with the other two Canadians staying in his hotel.

"No," I smiled and shook my head. "I'm alone."

"How long are you on Crete?" He wanted to know.

"About another week."

The bartender grinned knowingly. "You won't be alone for long," he promised. "You are too beautiful and shiny." Always the charmers, these Greeks.

"Shiny?" I laughed.

The bartender nodded. "Yes, shiny. Like alabaster."