Jeremy's Cool Travel Blog: The Cretin Hop, Part 1

Sunday, December 15

The Lasithi Plateau was our destination today. Lasithi is about an hour drive southeast of Heraklion. It is known as the "Plain of Windmills" for the thousands of now-mostly-abandoned windmills that were used to irrigate the land. Still, the mountainous drive to and around this bowl of farmland was beautiful. What we didn't expect was the snow!

Locals enjoying the snow at the Lasithi Plateau

Being a Sunday, many families were out to hike around Lasithi. The snow that had fallen wasn't much by Canadian standards, but there was enough that kids and parents everywhere were throwing snowballs at each other and building snowmen. A popular Cretian custom seems to be building snowmen on the hood of one's car and then driving around with it. This also seems to fit well with the Greeks' general driving habits.

Along our drive through Lasithi, we stopped at the village of Psychro to hike up to the Diktian Cave. This cave is known as the birthplace of Zeus and is an ancient site of worship. As the story goes, Zeus was the child of Kronos, who had devoured his other children to prevent them from overthrowing him as he had done to his father. Zeus was hidden by his mother, Rhea, in Diktian Cave to ensure that he would not follow the same fate as his siblings. (Zeus eventually poisoned Kronos, making him regurgitate his siblings to become new gods.) The cave is filled with limestone stalagmites and is pretty incredible to walk through.

Not far from the site of Diktian Cave, we passed through the village of Krassi and a famous plane tree that measures 24 meters in circumference and is estimated to be over 2,000 years old. Amazing!

We continued on from Lasithi to the coastal town of Agios Nikolaos (pop. 27,000). Here we spent only a short time, enough to see the old part of town and enjoy a beer by the harbour before driving home.

Definitely a 5-star day!

Some photos: