I certainly did not expect to face the “Windmill Dance”. For two reasons: first, because it was winter and at this time of year the “wind dancers” are gathering their wings. And secondly, because in 2006 there are very few left on the plateau. Even 20 years ago, when I was so impressed by the number of windmills in Lassithi, there were still few of them. The years had finally passed, when thousands, countless white feathers gurgled in the wind and made Lassithi the only region in the world with so many windmills.

– I, however, although I am not from Lassithi, was lucky enough to catch their heyday and their glory, to capture their light trajectory with my lens, says Vassilis Drossos, a well-known photographer of Heraklion, a traveller, nature lover and mountaineer.

We let him flip through the pages of his memories, recounting his first acquaintance with Lassithi, almost half a century ago.

MY FIRST VISIT TO THE LASSITHI PLATEAU

It was in 1960. When I was 16 years old, I was already a photographer. At that time all photographers were hunting for school trips to take souvenir photos for the children. I remember it was April and a high school had planned a field trip to the Lassithi Plateau. I followed them on a solex motorbike. We arrived at the holy monastery of Keras and continued up the uphill, twisting and very narrow dirt road full of rocks from landslides. The motorbike was struggling and at one point the throttle cable broke. I didn’t have the right tools to fix it and there was desolation all around me. I could see the stone mills at Seli in the distance and, thinking that that was where the village of Lassithi was, I calculated that I could get there in twenty minutes by pushing the motorbike to get help. As I climbed up the rough road in the sunshine, sweat was pouring from my ruddy face and my long hair falling, into my eyes had made me nervous. But stubbornness and curiosity pushed me onward to the stone windmills that are in Celi. Behind me I could see, as if I were in an airplane, the panoramic view of the Abelos Gorge and the valley of Gonias, Avdos and Potami as far as the northern coast of the Cretan Sea. But I was surprised to find that there was no human being there. I stopped at the bokha of Selio and felt a sense of awe.

A different world loomed before me. A fairy-tale landscape with thousands of windmills flooding the plain and spinning like a swarm of white butterflies. I hesitated for a moment, not knowing whether to continue or turn back. Ahead of me downhill, behind me downhill!

Curiosity prompted me to head downhill towards the plain. There I met a villager who was making furrows with his scaffolding and guiding the water from the mill to his garden. I ask him to tell me where Lassithi is. “Epae my child” he says, “which village do you want, there are many villages around…”. “I want you to tell me in which village I’m going to build my motorbike”, I reply. “We have an understanding,” he says. “Listen, you’ll go to Jermiado, it’s the biggest village and from there you’ll ask where the shoemaker is. He shoeing donkeys but he also knows about machines because he also shoeing digging tools and he will definitely shoe it for you.” I said goodbye to the villager and pushing the motorbike I arrived after about twenty minutes at Germiado. There I found the shoemaker trying to fit a horseshoe to some donkey. Next to him were other tied donkeys. The farrier was angry because the donkey was squeaking and making it difficult for him. I waited for him to finish, but he was taking his time. At one point when he stopped to wipe off his sweat, I got up the courage to ask him if he could take a look at my bike. He looked at me and, angry as he was, said “You’ll have to wait in line because I have two more to drop off and you’ll open up and I’ll see what I can do.” I was a little confused but I didn’t speak. I kept waiting until it was over. The time went by and the shoeing didn’t finish. It was getting to noon and I began to worry that I wouldn’t be able to make it back to Heraklion if it was evening. So I decided to take the motorbike and go back. On the way back I started to observe the scenery, calmer now since I had made up my mind that I would walk back. I liked this place very much. The beauty of the plain, the mills – which I considered to be the 8th wonder of the world that had not been discovered. I pushed myself until I reached Celi. I wiped my sweat and sat a little longer to admire this panorama, which I had not the heart to part with. Ahead of me the road descended to Avdou. I mounted the motorbike, got as far as there, and, pushing uphill and riding downhill, I reached Heraklion at dawn. All the way I didn’t meet a single car.

From then on I went almost every Sunday as an excursion, because I liked to see the mills and the various works going on in the plain. After my marriage I brought my wife and later my children here. I met a lot of people, I made friends from Lassithi. They are pure, kind-hearted, hard-working, progressive and hard-headed people. They are very tight on finances, but what they bargain for you you can be sure you will get, they will not cheat you. They made their money the hard way, sweating it out on the plain in winter and summer, and that made them respect their effort and not be wasteful. In my eyes it was a special society, enclosed in the mountains that surround this place. When I arrived in Celi I felt as if a gateway was opening, which in its passage took me to another world. From here, the plain seemed like a dance floor, where the folklore of the whole place gave its own recital every season of the year. Depending on the season, the villagers, farmers and stockbreeders, with their work, made the “dance floor” take on a different look and colour. Sometimes by sowing grain, sometimes with vegetables and sometimes with potatoes. And in winter, when the ‘dance’ stopped, the dance floor was covered with a cloak of snow and water, waiting for spring to begin the cycle of life again.

Almost 50 years have passed since then, but I still can’t get enough of this spectacle. It still fascinates me even now that there are only a few mills left, but enough to remind me of the beautiful moments and nostalgia of the past, when the Lassithi Plateau was the most beautiful theme and folklore park in the world. I would like to believe that even now it is not too late. Let us not let this so gifted place be spoiled by the passage of time and the madness of modernisation. Let us try to keep its beauty and values intact. No other place gathers so much folklore in such a small space. The whole of Lassithi is a folklore museum and it should be preserved as such.

BEGINNING OF JANUARY 2006

We leave the Heraklion-Agios Nikolaos township and take the uphill to Lassithi. A few days before, the friend of the magazine, Nicholas Loukakis, half Lassithian and half Sfakian, invited us to his place.

– But what do we have to see in Lassithi at this time of year? was our last line of resistance.

– The images of winter with its clear atmosphere, the calmness that prevails in fields and villages, the camaraderie around the fireplace, the exciting and unpredictable weather, all that only the locals and few visitors experience. The crowds and the windmills – at least the ones that are left – can be found in the summer.

It didn’t take much effort for Nicholas to convince us. After all, even though 6 years had passed, the experience of winter Crete in Zakros had never left our minds.

We drive uphill with many bends on an asphalt road network, which does not at all resemble the narrow dirt road and landslides that Vassilis Drossos had encountered in 1960. The picturesque, amphitheatrical village of “Kera” is the last settlement we encounter before we reach the Lassithi plateau. A well-known monument of orthodoxy in the area is the famous Monastery of “Panagia of Keras”. It is built just below the road on the northwestern edge of Mount Dikti, at an altitude of 630 m. The landscape is beautiful, lush, with abundant water. From the courtyard of the monastery the view to the plain and the vastness of the Cretan Sea is impressive. The architecture of the Katholikon is equally impressive, with obvious elements of Byzantine origin.

Although the exact date of the monastery’s foundation is unknown, it is thought to date back to the 2nd century BC. The exact date of the monastery’s foundation is unknown, but it is assumed that the monastery was founded in the Byzantine period (961-1211), which is a period of reconstruction and construction of many monasteries and churches. What is certain is that the first official reference to its existence is contained in a document by a notary of Chandaka dated 13 July 1333.

The kindly priest-Maximos welcomes us at the monastery and shows us around the rooms and the interior of the Catholicos with its magnificent frescoes, which were restored in the early 1970s. In its long history, the monastery has experienced successive disasters and adventures. Many times it gave everything for the country and became a bastion of liberation struggles. Famous for their miracles and loaded with legends and traditions are the two icons: the “Panagia Kardiotissa”, which today is located in the church of St. Alphonsus, and the “Panagia Keras”, which is located in the iconostasis of the Catholicos.(1)

As we ascend towards the plateau, a spectacular rocky cone looms high in the east. It is the lonely hill of the “Pin”, with the archaeological site of the same name, as a sign on the left of the road informs us. In this windswept and rugged area it is believed that the Minoans took refuge in 1100 BC to escape the Dorians. Some excavations have found remains of a settlement, but probably much more could still be revealed by a systematic excavation.

The initially passable and later rough uphill road leads us, two kilometres after the tarmac, to an elongated neck completely exposed to the winds. Here, at an altitude of about 1050 metres, we are struck by the simultaneous stunning view of the plateau, the Dikti mountain range and the sea. A series of ruined buildings dominate the line of the neckline. They are the once proud and flourishing stone and flour mills, 24 in all, which stand out like true villagers with their familiar bulk at the entrance to the plateau. Some of them – although with obvious signs of wear and tear – remain at their original height. Others lie almost on stone blocks. All of them, however, leave us astonished by their massive dimensions and their heavy construction of large stones, hewn or rough, which make them look more like bastions than mills.

In the direction of the plateau, the old and abandoned cobbled road that once led from the mills to the villages by a very short route can still be seen. Now that the mills are dead, its cobblestones no longer echo with the footsteps of people and animals. Only a well-informed traveller – a nature lover – remembers it.

Leaving the stone mills in their eternal solitude, we return to the asphalt road network, which in a few minutes brings us to “Seli”, the neck that is the main gateway to Lassithi. The mills that stand here are kept in better condition than those we left higher up on the neck, at the site of Karfios. They are the last flour mills – stone mills, which we meet before descending to the plateau. All of the thousands of mills that made Lassithi world famous are iron watermills of such light and “transparent” construction that, compared to the previous ones, they look like fragile children’s constructions.

Less durable were the first windmills, which were installed in existing wells for pumping irrigation water around 1890. Their original construction was wooden and caused many problems of operation and durability. With the introduction of innovations and the use of more and more iron parts, local craftsmen improved their operation. After 1920 the reconstruction of the old windmills with new materials was completed. The number of windmills increased geometrically and they ‘sprang up’ from every part of the 24 000 hectares of the plateau. With their all-white wings, which twitched and rotated at the slightest gust of wind, they created a gigantic scenery, a mythical choreography of thousands of dancers, eager, disciplined and uniform, impossible to meet the human eye anywhere in the world. Indeed, it is beyond our imagination to see the spectacle of some ten thousand revolving windmills, the number estimated to have been in operation in the 1930s and ’40s. It was the romantic but difficult time on the plateau, as it was in every rural area of the country. Mechanical support to the crops was rudimentary to non-existent. All work was done by hand or with the help of animals: ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, watering, harvesting the famous potato of Lassithi, transporting materials and products, cutting and transporting wood, heating the house with the fireplaces or wood stoves, preparing food and the delicious yeast bread on the fire and in the wood oven, extensive use of the loom for the family’s weaving and so much more. These quaint picturesque images, which used to be elements of everyday life – with much personal labour and toil, it is true – are increasingly rare nowadays and tend to disappear.

The echoes of the tradition still remain only in a few old period photographs or in individual activities, always featuring an elderly man or woman. We now consider the image of a conductor with his donkey or a woman spinning wool on a rocket or – even more so – carrying wood on her back to be a rare and collectible photographic subject. And they are rare images indeed. In a few years they won’t exist either.

So the development of technology has also had a catalytic effect on the use of windmills. Around 1955 the first petrol-driven pumps make their appearance on the plateau, and soon after their establishment for pumping irrigation water, the installation of new windmills stops. As their use declined, the number of windmills was reduced in 1973 to 8,000 and in 1983 to 1,000, about as many as I saw and was amazed the first time I crossed Lassithi. Today there are only a few, scattered here and there. The legendary Lassithi plains, which suddenly emerged like a fairy-tale place from the mouth of the neck and stunned hundreds of thousands of visitors, Greeks and foreigners alike, remains as an image only in the memories of the older ones or in some tourist guides and postcards of the time. This does not mean, of course, that after the winter season some white wings do not open again to the wind. But they are so few that they are not enough to recreate the spectacle that made Lassithi unique and famous worldwide. Of course, the time has definitely passed when every rural Lassithian family had some windmills on the land they cultivated.

– Back then, families had many children, an elderly man tells us. Every child, from his early years, was responsible for the operation and maintenance of a windmill, which he considered his own. It was not an easy job, it required responsibility and experience.

Today, the – even partial – revival of the past is a source of concern for residents and operators, since the windmills are the ‘trademark’ of the Lassithi plateau and an attraction for its many visitors. Since 1995 there has been a study by the Technical University of Mestovia for the reopening of some windmills, financed by the residents, who are obliged to take care of their operation. Let us hope that some new windmills will open their wings to attract more and more visitors, so necessary for the development of the place.

Dusk finds us crossing the “Tzermiado”, the seat of the Municipality of the Lassithi Plateau. As we start to climb eastwards towards Agios Nikolaos, a strange light, diffused across a large part of the sky, obliges us to stop. Far away on the western mountain horizon the sun is lowering between clouds, painting everything around it with purple highlights. Exposed to the cold north wind of the 900 m altitude, we remain for a long time ecstatic in the face of this sunset, one of the most spectacular that the plateau could offer us. When the light is too scarce for our cameras, we find a warm shelter in the nearby tavern “SKAPANIS”, whose windows face this spectacle. During this hour of rare beauty we have the privilege of being all alone. Next to the lit fireplace we celebrate with Cretan wine and raki the first night of our return to Crete. Raw wild mountain greens, trahanas, handmade macaroni – “koufichta” – and wonderful service from the family of Manolis Marmakethianakis, in one of the most beautiful spots of Lassithi.

It is already night when we arrive at the traditional guesthouse “Villaetti”, in the settlement of Ag. George Vidalis and Aliki, very friendly and open-hearted, welcome us with a lit fireplace and a nice tsikoudia. It is impossible to refuse or avoid it in Crete, it is inextricably linked to the tradition and everyday life of the Cretans. And, strange as it may sound, it tastes different and the desire to consume it is much stronger in Crete.

We fall asleep to the flames of the fireplace. As much as central heating is considered essential, the magic of the fireplace on a cold winter night has no substitute.

TO DIKTEO ANDRO

Winter is being felt in Lassithi. Here, at an altitude of 850 m, the weather bears little resemblance to the mild weather on the coast of Crete. Already at dawn the thermometer barely shows 3 degrees above zero. The sky, however, is still blue with sparse white spectacular clouds.

– It’s going to snow these days, says meteorologist Nicholas with certainty.

I show him the sky, smiling condescendingly.

– You have no idea how unpredictable the weather is up here. You’ll soon find out.

Besides, during the Christmas days the surrounding mountains and the whole plateau were covered with snow, our friend concludes.

We start our tour in direction D and our destination is Psychro. On the route we pass successively by the villages of Ag. Georgios, Koudoumalia, Avrakontes, Kaminaki, Magoulas. All of them have a nice view of the plateau and the surrounding mountains and could be much more picturesque if the traditional houses that are left were more and the new houses more tasteful. At Psichro we stop. A sign directs us up the steep cobbled road to Dikteo Andro.

If the Lassithi Plateau has the remaining windmills as a visible tourist attraction, there is something else, unseen and of great archaeological and historical importance. It is the Dikteo Andro, the most famous ancient Cretan cult cave, located in the depths of the Lassithi mountains, the legendary ancient Dikti, a sacred mountain throughout central and eastern Crete.

We begin to climb the wide cobbled road, uneven in several places and with sparse steps in between. The entire rough limestone slope is overgrown with tree-like holly. Many of these are huge in volume, over-mature and abound on all the slopes surrounding the plateau. In 13 minutes at a normal pace we cover the 100-metre difference in altitude from our starting point and arrive in front of the entrance to the ticket office at an altitude of 1025 metres.(2)

The view of the plateau is already impressive. We can clearly make out several of the characteristic “linias”, the drainage channels that were opened in the 17th century by the Venetians to deal with the flooding of the river Haila in the cultivated areas after heavy rainfall. And it is truly fascinating to contemplate even today, after some four centuries, the dozens of long straight lines that cut horizontally and vertically across the plateau.

The time has come to enter the cave. From the excellent monograph “Diktaio Andro” by Antonis Vassilakis (3) we draw a wealth of fascinating information. According to the most ancient Greek written tradition, the poet Hesiod, the cave is associated with the birth and worship of Zeus, the ‘Cretan’ and the great king of Crete, Minos, son of the father of the gods. The Diktaio Andro is undoubtedly the first of all Cretan caves in terms of majesty and grandeur, since for about 6,000 years it has inspired a mystical mood and awe in the visitor. It is also one of the first major archaeological sites in Crete where excavations were carried out.

The discovery of ancient objects in the cave was made in 1880, according to the testimony of Joseph Hatzidakis, by a hunter who took refuge in the upper part of the cave to protect himself from bad weather.

Accidentally with his gun he found a bronze figurine of an ox. Word of the event got out and all the villagers started looking for antiquities. They found numerous bronze and clay figurines, double axes, arrows, swords, spears, spearheads and clay vases which they sold to various buyers, while whole loads of bronze objects seem to have ended up in foundries in Heraklion!

According to Hogarth, the first antiquities were discovered in 1883 by locals using the cave as a stable. Hatzidakis and Alber were alerted and were the first to explore it in 1886; after their departure the villagers continued to find antiquities.

They sold these to Evans, who visited the cave first in 1894 and then in the next two years with Myers. He took the finds from the excavations to Britain to the Asmolean Museum. The third explorer of the cave was the Frenchman Demarn in 1897. The systematic excavator, however, was Hogarth in 1899. It is worth following a small part of his fascinating account. Very quickly a variety of bronze objects came to light and a few pieces of gold showed up in the sieves.

Although a crust of stalactite had covered everything, it was worth the effort to break it. Suddenly a bronze knife, protruding from a stalactite-column was presented and on this occasion more blades and pins were found. Some cracks yielded up to ten copper objects, which were nailed to the stalactites and stalagmites and we had to break them to get them.

From the mud at the bottom of the small lake we collected over a dozen bronze figurines and half a dozen carved jewels along with several common rings, pins and blades. In the hope of a reward for the best objects and in the excitement of such an unprecedented search, the villagers worked with frantic enthusiasm, climbing the pillars that rose above the lake. It was an uncanny sight, unprecedented in the experience of any archaeologist.

After four days I received all the bronze objects, about 500 in all, the gold objects, the precious stones, the ivory and bone objects, the terracotta, and left for Heraklion. I left in the care of the village officials 550 intact specimens of simple conical cups and a large quantity of bone.”

In both the upper and lower parts of the cave, numerous and varied finds have been discovered, characteristic of the various periods of occupation and cult phases of the cave. All the finds and the periods of occupation and worship are described in detail in the monograph by Vassilakis. It is worth mentioning that the habitation and cult use of Dikteo Andro dates back to the Neolithic period and continued until the Greco-Roman times, i.e. for a total period of about 4,500 years.

Possessive cult caves are one of the two major categories of natural sanctuaries. The other category is the so-called ‘summit shrines’ or ‘mountain shrines’ or simply ‘open-air shrines’. Of the 3,500 (!) caves and other geological formations recorded in Crete, only a few dozen can be classified as cult caves. The four most famous are the Dikteo Andro, the Idao Andro, the ‘Cave of Eilithia Amnisou’ and the ‘Cave of Kamares’, while the most fully researched is the Dikteo Andro.

As we begin our visit we first encounter the Upper Cave, a chamber of impressive dimensions with a length of 42, width of 19 and a maximum height of 6.5 meters. Here there are large rocks and a few stalagmites. Descending several dozens of winding stairs amidst rich decoration, we reach the base of the cave, where the famous “sacred lake” is located, measuring 16 x 7.5 metres and about one metre deep. At its bottom, where ancient artefacts once rested for thousands of years, today countless and varied modern coins shimmer as visitors drop them. The whole area around the pond is endowed by nature with spectacular and rich lithic decoration, stalactites, stalagmites, columns, parapets. Unfortunately, in the years that preceded it, much damage has been done, and the decoration, ceiling and walls are blackened by the fumes of the lamps that were once used. This, however, does not detract from the richness of the decoration or the value and importance of the visit.

Throughout the year, and especially during the summer season, the cave attracts thousands of visitors, Greeks and foreigners alike. In the neighbouring villages and especially in Psychro, a remarkable tourist infrastructure has developed in recent years with shops, some accommodation and many good taverns. In the wide parking area before the uphill cobbled road, many restaurants and cafes operate in the summer, but now only one is open, the “Diktamos”. A large and beautiful place with a fireplace, excellent view of the plateau, very friendly and helpful family of Charilaos Galanakis and excellent quality of all the flavors we try.

WANDERING ON THE PLATEAU

In the next few days the weather is still cold, with impressive cloud formations and long periods of sunshine. The ominous forecasts of our friend Nicolas are not confirmed for the moment. White patches of Christmas snow still remain on the surrounding mountains, but the plateau is dry and, with the almond trees already in bloom, looks like spring.

Every day, from early morning to last light, we spend our time on leisurely, stress-relieving tours of every part of the plateau. With the good – generally – regional asphalt network we have the opportunity to get to know all the villages. They are built around the perimeter of the plateau on the road, passing either the edges of the cultivated land or the foothills of the hills. The appearance of the villages of Lassithi is roughly uniform. Houses of normal size or small, small squares of limited size, several narrow streets, some of them paved. The traditional stone-built villages are few and even fewer are those with notable architecture. Cement, aluminium and sometimes some crude building materials prevail, homogeneous and beautiful place perhaps more attention should be paid to the residential identity. There are of course some limited concentrations of traditional houses, but they are lost in the heterogeneous construction choices that have prevailed in recent years.

However, regardless of the general appearance of the building fabric, there is no lack of interest in touring the villages of Lassithi, where we discover several corners of the past, taverns and small cafes with open-hearted people, who are always willing to treat strangers to a cup of tea or coffee. In Ag. It is housed in a stone-built building of 1871 and contains photographic material, historical documents and numerous memorabilia relating to the great Cretan.

Very close to St. George is also the historic Monastery of Krustallenia, which is believed to have been founded during the Second World War. During the period of the desolation of Lassithi (1284-1514) it ceased to function and was destroyed, but it was re-established in 1545 and since then it continued its spiritual work and its great contribution to all Cretan struggles. Today the monastery is a large building complex with many cells and other facilities, a courtyard with multiple levels and a katholikon that dominates the highest point but is closed. A rare and curious phenomenon that impresses us is the well-known cluster of 15 trunks of century-old holly trees that have grown, one next to the other, around, on and inside a large rock in the courtyard of the monastery.

Much later is the Vidiani Monastery, on the NW side of the plateau. The katholikon is of fortress form, built with large hewn stones in the middle of towering cypresses. The monastery must have been built in the early 1800s and was burnt down by the Turks in 1866. It was re-established in 1879 and operated until 1943, when the last abbot, Dorotheos Tsagarakis, was killed by the Germans. In 1990, the current Bishop of Petra and Hersonissos Nektarios started the restoration effort, which, along with the creation of the Natural History Museum, is being continued by Abbot Dorotheos.

A little further down from Vidiani, at the western end of the plateau, is the location “Chonos”, where all the waters of Lassithi end.

In the centre of Psychros, just below the church, we admire a large covered spring, built in 1887. During this period, when there has not been much snow or heavy rainfall, the flow of the wonderful water from its taps is incredible.

In the hamlet of Marmaketo, before Tzermiado, a large fir tree, the only one of its kind on the plateau, appears by the side of the road.

In the small settlement of Mesa Lasithaki, we meet an elderly lady, who, laden with a sack disproportionately heavy for her age and her considerable physique, has slowly made her way to Mesa Lassithi. We ask her.

– To Mesa Lassithi, son.

– You’re going all that way loaded? Come with us.

– No, son, it’s okay, I’m used to it.

After many attempts we bend her pride. All the way she never ceases to please us and fill us with wishes.

I am reminded of a similar scene of supreme endurance and dignity about twenty years ago in a village in Mani. An 80-year-old woman was carrying half a tin of oil on her back. With great effort and pleading we had persuaded her to accept our help for the rest of the 5 km journey to her destination.

Above Agios Konstantinos rises a lonely and steep hill that dominates the entire plateau. We take the craggy dirt road, which after one and a half kilometers leads to the top of the hill. Here we find a concrete water tank, a column of the G.Y.S. and the chapel of the Holy Cross, built with stone in 1864 but whitewashed. The view from the altitude of about 1000 meters is top notch. We stay for a long time and embrace with our gaze the whole plateau with the fields, the trees, the iron silhouettes of the mills, the canals of the Venetians and the rural roads, the villages around and on them the snow-dusted ridge tops. Lassithi is a very beautiful place, inhabited from the Neolithic era to the present day, with direct participation in all the struggles of Crete’s long historical journey. (5)

But the most fascinating images of our wanderings are found in the interior of the plateau, in this cultivated paradise of countless small properties. On its fertile soils at an altitude of 850 metres, many and varied fruit trees, potatoes renowned for their quality and a multitude of vegetables, everything imaginable, thrive. Many flocks of sheep can be found grazing carelessly in lush green pastures, while at the foot of the rugged hillsides goats climb the bushes looking for tender leaves and shoots. In the southern parts of the plateau we see many vineyards being cultivated, while nearby there is a large water reservoir and the mouth of the Chavga Gorge, which ends in the ‘Plateau of Katharos’.

The cultivated plain is covered with wells, built internally with stone walls. Above them stand the bare iron bodies of the windmills. Few of them will be lucky enough to require white sails in summer, turning as of old to the gust of wind.

An optimistic message for the further development of the tourist infrastructure of the area is heralded by the operation of the Ecological Traditional Park of Lasinthos. Spread out on a magnificent 150-acre slope, near the settlement of Agios Georgios, the unit combines traditional accommodation with a total capacity of 73 beds, a wonderful and very large dining hall, numerous domestic animals and birds, a wide range of organic crops and generally all those elements that allow the visitor not only to know but also to participate in the annual production cycle of the products and generally in the traditional way of life of the plateau.

ON THE PLATEAUS OF KATHAROS AND LIMNAKAROS

The weather changes day by day. The temperature drops, the clouds darken and thicken, more and more often hanging menacingly over the plateau. Now and then they moisten his land sometimes with sudden few-minute showers and sometimes with long hours of slow rain.

– I suggest a route outside the narrow confines of Lassithi, Nicholas says one afternoon.

It is in “Katharos”, a plateau at a much higher altitude than Lassithi. Maybe all this rain there is snow.

We don’t hesitate at all. We start from the square of Tzermiadou towards Agios Nikolaos. At 5.3 km we turn right. Uphill, dirt road rough, stones and bushes, on the southern horizon the coast of Ag. Nikolaos is visible. 4 km after the asphalt road we turn right again. Far off in the west, the Lassithi plateau, with an oval shape, can be seen lower down. Soon it disappears from sight, a new plateau surrounded by mountains appears. It is the ‘Katharos Plateau’, a truly mountainous place, at an altitude of about 1200 metres. Narrow and long, sprinkled with snow, without settlements and windmills, it is deserted at this time of year. In the summers, on its 15,000 acres of land, vegetables and grain are grown, and in its rich pastures graze over 40,000 sheep and goats.

It greets us with muddy streets, huge, spherical-shaped purples, and sparsely built houses scattered here and there, without the slightest sign of life. Only a chimney smokes in this desolation. It is in the tavern of “Zerva”, in front of the rudimentary little square, the only one that stays open in winter.

Yannis Siganos gets up from his chair next to the lit mashina and welcomes us.

– How did you get up here in this weather?

– Well, we thought we’d come and meet you.

Bearded, simple and authentic, the “hermit of Katharos” is best known in the region by the nickname “Zervas”, which he inherited from his left-handed great-grandfather. For five years now, he spends most of his life in Katharos, enjoying the peace and quiet and beautiful nature, spotting and collecting fossils, drinking wine with his friends. He has no electric light. In the summer he only needs the generator and in the winter the LPG. There is music on the radio, here the TV is unknown.

– What should I do with it? Life is better without it.

His tavern is tiny, it fits the three little tables all together and the wood stove in the middle. Yannis fries pork chops and chips, brings salad, delicious cheese, raki and fine wine. At some point he takes the guitar off the nail. He starts singing ballads by Papakonstantinou and Savvopoulos.

We’re with him. Outside, the night is gloomy, the snow begins to fall.

– I say get going, my friends, to keep the road open. The night will be hard.

– Goodbye, Yannis, another time.

The next morning we are awakened by a loud noise. We take a look outside the windows. Countless white balls bounce off the plates.

– That’s the “coconut”, says Nicholas.

Expect snow soon.

This time I have no reason to doubt his predictions. We set off for a walk on the frozen plateau. A huge dark cloud breaks away from the northern part of the sky and approaches us at speed. In less than three minutes the blizzard erupts, fierce, mesmerizing.

It lasts for a few minutes and then climbs southwards to the Dikti mountain range. The weather becomes calm again, as before.

– Now on the plateau of “Limnakaros” there will be a lot of snow, Nicholas mutters.

– Shall I interpret this statement as your wish? I ask him.

He restrains himself from smiling. From the settlement of Avrakontes we take the uphills. The asphalt road quickly becomes dirt. After a few bends the dirt disappears, giving way to a white, impalpable carpet that gets thicker as it goes on. 5 km after the settlement of Avrakontes we reach the Limnakaros plateau. Everything is white, the snow exceeds 10 cm. Our footsteps lead us to the chapel of Ag. Pneuma. These are the only traces on the virgin snow surface.

Overcoming many unseen traps with a slow four-wheel drive, we cross the plateau in an easterly direction. The last dangerous part of the route is the very narrow and icy downhill road over a wild canyon. After a total of 13 kilometres we reach the asphalt road, in front of the cemetery church of St. Sava, 100 metres from the first houses of St. George.

EPILOGUE

In one week, the wintery Lassithi gave us all the weather: sun, heat, rain, snow and hail. But it also gave us a tasty surprise: fish soup made from freshly caught roe. Yannis Archavallis, a great traveller and a fanatic reader of the magazine, brought it to the Vilaeti guesthouse on the last evening, right from the very first issue.

– So many times I said I would write to you, but I neglected to do so. And here I am, meeting you in my place. A fish soup of the finest quality, a griffin out of his own body in the dead of winter.

– Come on, at last we can get away from meat, says Anna happily.

– That’s impossible in Crete, says Aliki and shows the table a goat stew and Cretan pilaf.

– I approve and approve, says George next to her, as he flicks the coals on the fireplace and throws pieces of pork on them.

The seafood menu turned out to be misleading after all. It was only the tidbits for tsikoudia, Yannis’s contribution to the company’s merriment. Impossible in Crete to avoid tradition!