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‘Feel your kidneys expand,” Melissa, our delightfully laid-back yoga instructor, says as a small group of us attempt to mimic her contortions. Our 90-minute, pre-breakfast yoga session begins at a non-vacation-like 7:30 a.m., in the tiny Greek fishing village of Matala, a one-time hippie enclave. We're on our hotel's rooftop patio, with Matala's sandstone cliffs before us, bathed in the glow of the rising sun. A stiff breeze seasoned with sea salt flips our mats. The group's level of yogic ability ranges from expert and supple to novice and brittle. “This one's good for the digestion,” Melissa suggests, as we execute another manoeuvre on empty stomachs.

Later, over a breakfast of fresh-squeezed orange juice and that Cretan delicacy of yogurt drizzled with honey, thirtysomething Lara, a Vancouver software developer, remembers thinking, “Digest what? I'm so hungry.” But because we're having so much fun, we crack up like schoolchildren for the umpteenth time and dig in.

Of course we're having fun. We're on Crete's unspoiled southern coastline, practising yoga and hiking amid rugged mountain vistas, kayaking on the turquoise waters of the Libyan Sea and touring ancient Minoan ruins.

It's early October, one of my favourite months to visit Greece. Tourist traffic is dramatically reduced, and the sun and water are still warm and often hot. Rain remains rare.

Our group of nine paddlers includes two guides from the Northwest Passage, a Wilmette, Ill., travel company that has organized adventure getaways for more than 20 years.

We rendezvoused at the airport in Heraklion, Crete's congested capital. I took the overnight ferry from Piraeus, Athens' bustling main port. Everyone else flew in.

The ferry has its drawbacks, one being your arrival in Heraklion's dark and charmless port at 5:30 a.m., where you must find a cab for the short ride to the airport. Still, the ferry ride eases you nicely into the trip. I cannot remember when I last took the time to savour the slow rise of an ivory-white crescent moon over an inky black horizon like the one we sailed into.

At the airport, we pile into three minibuses, suffer Heraklion's bumper-to-bumper traffic, and about an hour later spill into Knossos, the famous Minoan ruin, where we meet Irini, our guide for the next 90 minutes.

The fifth largest island in the Mediterranean, Crete lies 160 kilometres south of Athens.

The place is steeped in myth. Zeus is said to be buried on nearby Mount Juktas, which viewed from a certain angle features a ridge resembling a human face in profile. And Knossos is often said to be the site of the labyrinth built by King Minos to hold the ferocious minotaur.

Archeology tells us that the island has been inhabited without interruption for 8,000 years, yet we know next to nothing about the Minoans, whose tenure ran from 2600 to 1100 BC. Their writing, known as Linear A, has defied deciphering. They were, however, the Mediterranean's first nautical superpower, as evidenced by the lack of walled fortifications around their palaces. In The Odyssey, Homer calls Knossos “a mighty city.” Among the finds there, a wooden sink and a toilet that had continuously running water. “They were living in palaces,” Irini tells us, “when the rest of Europe lived in darkness.”

About 3,500 years ago, the volcanic archipelago of Santorini, about 100 kilmetres north of Crete, erupted in one of the largest explosions in history. The ensuing tsunami pounded Crete's northern shore, and ash blanketed much of the region. A popular theory holds that the calamity led to the demise of the Minoan civilization.

After lunch, it's back into the minibuses for the drive south, through vineyards, olive groves and rolling foothills of lush greenery. We arrive in Matala, where legend has it Zeus swam ashore with his future wife Europa on his back.

Matala's cliffs, honeycombed with man-made caves, were once used as Roman tombs.

More recently, the village became famous as a hippie enclave in the 1960s and 70s. The caves became a squatters' haven for the clothing-optional subculture of the time. Joni Mitchell stayed here, and in the song Carey, on her iconic album Blue, she sings of the wind blowing in from Africa and life “beneath the Matala moon.”

“If you have any problems,” our guide Wendy says with a glint in her eye, wheeling our minibus to a stop in front of our hotel, “they'll soon be blown away.”

We go for drinks and watch the sunset at a café perched high above the nearby beach at Kommos. The wind is howling, and we wonder whether we'll be able to paddle

tomorrow.

The next morning – after breakfast – we're fitted with lifejackets and paddles, and given a crash course in kayaking 101. Lara and I share a Pouch (rhymes with tuque), a collapsible kayak that's not fast but stable. We tool around in the bay, avoiding the whitecaps farther out at sea. But we still find ourselves in 11/2-metre swells. We're encouraged to practise a “wet exit” by capsizing near shore. Several paddlers gamely jettison themselves. The manoeuvre looks like it could include breathing water, so when Lara and I are told the Pouch is difficult to right, we use that as an excuse to skip the drill.

While breakfasts and all but one dinner are included, we're on our own for our lunches. At Notos café in Matala, they've perfected gyros, stuffing a fresh pita to bursting with succulent strips of pork, juicy tomato, crisp red onion, paprika, French fries and tzatziki.

Seventy-five-year-old Alexandra Andrianaki is the café's matriarch. Widowed and dressed all in black, she has startling blue eyes. Her girlish enthusiasm charms passersby.

After a meal, she serves, as most Cretans do, a complimentary glass or two of the local moonshine, a clear, surprisingly smooth if potent spirit called tsikoudia, known in other parts of Greece as raki. She calls it an essential source of “vitamins.”

And I am not allowed to leave before she packs me two bunches of succulent grapes from her garden.

It's too windy to paddle to Red Beach that afternoon, so we hike 40 minutes to the pebbled oasis where birthday suits appear to be standard issue. We scrape clay from the cliffs into a child's plastic pail, add seawater, smear the rejuvenating muck all over our bodies, then lie in the sun until it dries so hard that smiling cracks our faces.

“This feels amazing,” Lara says. “I've had to pay $180 for this.”

Some of us skip the afternoon yoga session – there are generally two a day – for a bit of downtime and souvenir hunting in Matala's plentiful shops. Before dinner, we are offered an optional 20-minute hike to the top of the mountain behind the town to watch another sunset. When we arrive, the guides surprise us with champagne, Cretan wine and cold beers. We toast the setting sun. We're up with the roosters for the one-hour drive to Phaestos, another Minoan palatial ruin, this one dominating the high ground in a fertile valley cupped by a ring of mountains. Unlike Knossos, which was a teaming anthill of tourists, Phaestos at this hour is wonderfully deserted. We walk through its jasmine-scented entrance and are treated to an expanse of storage vaults, stone staircases and human-sized clay urns that once held olive oil.

The next 90 minutes of driving takes us into the clouds, along steep switchbacks and hairpins that jostle the bus and its passengers. “Oh God,” Lara groans, swaying in the back seat.

Our destination is the Samaria Gorge, a national park and UNESCO biosphere reserve. The gorge is 18 kilometres long, 13 of which we will hike. The entrance is 1,250 metres above sea level. We arrive in the early afternoon, and after a slightly heated discussion with the ticket agent, are the last group allowed to enter the park. The trek can take six hours – and it is not something you want to attempt in the dark.The gorge itself is a geological treat, and although a field guide informs me that there are “extensive outcrops of phyllite-quartzite rock,” as well as “obvious signs of Oligocene compressional tectonics,” I choose to simply enjoy the pretty formations.

About halfway down, we glimpse a rare kri-kri. These wild goats are protected, a gift to observe. As I snap a couple of pictures, another kri-kri materializes to my right and leers at me with those weird, almond-shaped eyes goats have.

If you plan it right, you'll find yourself near the bottom of the gorge in the late afternoon. By then the shadows have grown longer, the light now soft and yellowing as you march through shadows, past the silvery stones of the dry riverbed. At the park exit, wild sage and oregano add fragrance to the air. A great bearded bear of a man named Manolis collects our tickets and cross-references them to make sure no one has been left behind. He has a bone-crushing handshake.

Manolis typifies the people of this region. Cretans, in general, are a proud folk, considering themselves apart from other Greeks. Those from around the Samaria Gorge have a particularly rich history, having for centuries used the gorge as a walled fortress against all manner of invaders.The rest of our trip is taken up by leisurely paddles to deserted or near-deserted beaches, among them Sweet Water Beach, where freshwater springs form pools among the pebbles. There is also cliff diving at Marmara Beach, after another spectacular day-long hike, this one down the vertiginous Aradena Gorge – where you have to channel your inner goat to survive – and a short, pre-dawn trek to the ruins of an Ottoman-era fortress to watch the sunrise.

Our last yoga session, in the magical town of Loutro, is in another ruin, this one Venetian.

While having lunch at the lone café at Marmara Beach, where they make a wonderful cheese-filled crepe doused in honey, and a delicious “ancient salad” with lentils,

chickpeas, pinto beans, tomato, red onion and shredded carrot, Wendy asks, “Any complaints?”

“Yeah,” Lara shoots back, “this trip is way too short.”

Special to The Globe and Mail