• Insurance coverage and law require International Driver’s Licenses, usually easy to get—in the U.S. at AAA offices & other venues outside U.S. (Rental car places sometimes don’t ask for them, and sometimes insist, so be prepared.)
• If pre-booking, ask for “airport pickup and drop off” so an agent meets you when you leave Baggage-Claim. This is by far the easiest, and most efficient way to pick up (and drop off) a rental car.
• Before you release the agent, remember that, historically, Cretan rentals take a beating and get little service. Check tires, lights, etc., and check tank.  The rule “Leave tank as found,” often results in an empty tank, and will burn you if you pick up late and gas stations are closed.
• Or the opposite. The quaint history of renting a car that’s been beaten like an island mule is now changing, sometimes to the renter’s detriment.  We hear more and more stories where rental car companies are recording ‘damage’ on returned cars in a way that comes suspiciously close to checking for simple ‘use.’  If the agent insists on reviewing the car with you at delivery, do so, and take pictures of any, even slight damage, and describe the damage on the contract—especially if the agent does not note that damage first.
• Also, on the rental contract you will most likely sign a promise not to take the car ‘off-road.’ Quite surprisingly, this can occur even for actual ‘off-road’ rentals like Jeeps and other 4x4s and SUVs, which you’ve chosen precisely so you can get ‘off-road.’  Keep in mind that what ‘off-road’ can mean to the rental company is just a ‘dirt’ road, even a well-established and public way—of which Crete has many.  That description includes the road (almost every tourist in their rental car takes) to Balos, and the parking lot at Elafonisi.  Keep that in mind as you explore the island, where many of the roads are well-graded, easily travelled, but dirt.  And if you do have a problem or flat, hire a private tow-company to get you back to the paved section, and then call the rental car company.
• And be aware: Like Olympic runners with lousy shoes, rental car SUVs and 4x4s with crappy tires can neither go where nor do what they were designed to go and do; and rental car companies rarely pay the cost of fitting those vehicles with good, off-road tires.  So, while it’s tempting to rent one of these vehicles and suddenly believe that you’re George of the Jungle or King of the Wildebeests, be careful about dashing truly ‘off-the-road’ and following some rutted tractor path to a secluded beach.  You may end up stuck there and then, like Tom Hanks, have no one to talk to for years (your passengers will not be talking to you any longer) but a volleyball.

Busses are frequent, cheap (€5-€8) and go everywhere on the island.  They are not fast, but they’re not a bad option to get around for anyone who wants to avoid the hassle of having/parking/gassing a car, or just to get to Villa Koukouvayia for the young, the broke, or the simply adventurous who have not rented a car and don’t want to pay to money for a taxi.  To arrive at the farm from a flight, just take the airport bus to the Xania bus terminal, (usually runs each ½ hour) then the Kissamos/Kastelli bus (usually hourly) from Chania.  Ask the driver to drop you off in Kaloudiana (Kah-lou-thee-ahh-NAH).  Once in Kaloudiana, you are 1.2 km from the house.  You can use the final maps/photos below and walk (if you don’t have a lot of luggage); or call us and we’ll usually be able to come down and pick you up.  To use the bus system to get around the island, you can just walk down from Villa Koukouvayia to the bus stop at the village below. Schedules are easily found online (in English) and easy to read understand.

Taxis from CHQ/Xania to Kaloudiana/Villa K. are about €60, without tip.  (It’s convenient & fast—not cheap.)

• Especially on the National Road between the northern cities, lane-lines are suggestions more than rules. The National Road might look like a two-lane highway, but it’s actually four lanes, made so by everyone in the slow lane staying right and straddling the (so-called) ‘emergency-lane,’ thereby allowing faster cars to easily pass (even in the face of oncoming traffic), which they do, putting on their left-signals to warn the oncoming traffic they’ll be drifting a bit into their lane. 
  
  

  If you come from a culture that sees all rules as absolute rather than contextual, splitting lanes will appear unsafe.  And it is, if only a few practice it and other cars don’t expect it.  So here, it’s only unsafe when scared first-time tourists don’t understand what’s going and fail to stay right, or Americans (who think of lanes as historical family property and defend the space at all costs) fight it.

  Unfortunately, you must be careful of taking advantage of this trick and passing others.  Unless you have rented a beaten-up farm-truck and rented two goats for the pickup bed, you could be subject to one of the few cases where Crete takes advantage of tourists instead of welcoming them.  During the tourist season, the police have been known to put their coffee down, leave the café, and set up shop on the National Road, targeting the easily distinguished rental cars and clipping the contextually innocent drivers for doing what everyone else is doing: “overtaking illegally.”  And in those cases, the consequences are rough—pulling your license and not releasing it until you pay a €600 (that’s not a typo) fine. 

  So, make sure when you do pass, it’s one of the many places on the national highway with the dotted lines, where overtaking is okay.

• In most cases, a person’s capacity to comfortably drive a car involves whether they can drive a standard transmission or need an automatic. In Crete, what’s more important is if they have a fear of heights.  Cretan topography is dramatic, and—speaking in geological time-frames—almost fluid.  There are roads everywhere, but other than the length of National Highway along the (relatively) flat northern coast, the roads must bend, rise and fall with the landscape, and they do all three with a passion, often without guardrails.  (Just as people living at the equator don’t have words for ‘snow,’ Cretan Greek doesn’t seem to have a word for ‘guard-rail.’)

  But every price has its rewards, and those same roads, when driven with courage and care, will take you to places and views otherwise available only in dreams.