We arrived at the Samaria Gorge in Crete, Greece, just as the sun was rising. The sunbeams bathed the towering rocks in a warm light, and I was excited to begin our 11-mile descent down the gorge.
I was studying art and philosophy in Greece, Italy, and Turkey with 21 other students from my college, and today we were hiking down the gorge to a beach at the very bottom. Our assignment was to take pictures of different rock formations, and initially, as we descended, I had a wonderful time chatting and laughing with friends while trying to take artsy pictures of the rocks. But near the end of our hike, I started to get a severe headache, which got even worse by the time we reached the beach. I didn’t want anything to interfere with the beautiful day I was having, so I tried to just forget about how much my head was bothering me and enjoy swimming in the crystal-clear water.
By the time we were ready to begin the journey back to our hotel, though, it was getting hard to just ignore the headache. I also realized that we still had a rough 45-minute ferry ride and then a two-hour bus ride down a winding mountain road before we would get back into town—neither of which sounded very appealing, given the way I was feeling.
