Today was another sea to mountains day. We gave our little Hyundai a good workout, even though we drove less than 100 miles altogether.
We began the day at the port of Agios Nikolaos which is another beautiful port town of which Crete has far more than its share. The most interesting thing about the harbor is Lake Voulismini which is an extension of the harbor connected to the ocean by a very narrow opening only about 15 feet wide.
The promenade besides being beautiful and full of restaurants had two very nice pieces of art connected to the history of Crete that Ton really liked, one is dedicated to the founding mother of the Minoan civilization Europa, and the other is Almatheas Horn, which comes from a story in Greek mythology with connections to Crete, that gave us the concept of the cornucopia, or horn of plenty.
We spent about an hour walking the waterfront and enjoying the views. Ton always provides me a list of points of interest for us to check out in towns that we visit. After visiting the two statues and the lake she said there was a square in town we should go see. When we got to the square it was very non-descript, but it was next to where we had parked the car, so we decided to head to the mountains.
Our first stop in the mountains was a pretty short drive to the mountains right above Agios Nikolaos to a town called Kristos. The tourist literature said it was a mountain town with many craft shops. When we arrived there was a parking lot at the bottom of town for visitors which was full of farm equipment being stored or abandoned, and there were no spaces available. After a few minutes of puzzling out what to do we decided to double park one of the pieces of farm equipment that looked like it hadn’t moved in months and head into town. Ton saw a church in the distance she wanted to check out, but truthfully I was not too motivated as it was going to be a good climb to get there so I did not bother looking at my map to find a route there, and took the attitude if we got there we got there. The town was ok, but it didn’t impress us, and we never got to the church.
The owner of the campground we are staying at really recommended the Lassithi Plateau as a place to visit, so we headed there next. We returned to the national highway and after following the coast for about 30 minutes we turned up into the mountains to Lassithi. The plateau is at an average elevation of 2470 feet and since we were at sea level when we began, we were going to give our little Hyundai a workout.
The rock that forms the floor of the plateau is impermeable, so the water table is extremely high and the valley floor tends to flood very easily. To manage the water in the past the people of the plateau used sail powered water pumps to move the water thru a canal system. At its peak there were over 10,000 of these pumps in use.
Right as we entered the plateau we saw a tavern and we stopped for lunch. It turns out today was the first day open since they closed for the winter. We were the only customers at the time, and the food was great.
It was a traditional tavern built of stone with wood stoves for heating. While we were waiting for our food, Ton had a great time exploring the nooks and crannies of the place looking at old pictures, and random stuff on display. She really enjoyed herself.
We drove around the plateau for a while after lunch enjoying the views and admiring the farms. The plateau was absolutely the high light of the day for us and was worth the winding drive up and down to get to it.