Public buses
Greece has a national bus service called KTEL. It is cheap, safe
and reasonably punctual.
KTEL Chania has its own web site. The rest of the ilsand is part of the general KTEL web site
I do not know how up to date the timetables are kept but the Chania site seems
to be pretty good. If you want to double-check, the phone numbers of the main
bus depots are 2831022212 for Rethimnon and 2821093052 for Chania. Don't assume
that they will speak English well or at all.
As a rule, there are many buses per day between the main cities
and at least 2 a day to even the smallest villages, if only to take
children to and from school.
The buses between Heraklion and Rethimnon - Chania run hourly from 5.30 am
(first departure from Hania and Heraklion) to 8.30 pm (last departure from
Chania and Heraklion). This can pose a problem for night arrivals at the airports.
The travel between Chania and Heraklion takes over two hours - do
enquire though, there are some express buses as well as a few that are particularly
slow.
The buses are in good mechanical condition but few are very recent
models. Most buses on the main routes have air-conditioning.
The drivers are safe and competent and accidents are very very rare.
This is probably the safest form of transport in Crete. |