Friday, May 6, 2011

Last whole day in Greece

Sami has a cute little harbor and this morning during breakfast we observed several old Greek fishermen coming in with their catch. Over the next hour, we watched them separate their catch from the nets, sell some fish to a local housewife, and mend their nets.


We rode our bikes to see two natural local phenomena, one underground lake and one limestone cave. Lake Melissani is a deep pool of water (39 meters or 128 ft.) within a cave that is 160 m long and 40 m wide. An opening above the lake lets in sunlight which illuminates the lake. You get a little boat ride around the lake. The water is breathtaking clear and breathtaking cold (40 degrees F).








After visiting the lake, we took the long way (and scenic) through some hill towns to get to Drohgarda Cave. We rode through some ancient olive trees that were larger than any we had seen. We think they may be approaching some of the oldest recorded olive tree ages which are over 2400 years old. We read up on olives on Wikipedia and the article is fascinating (check it out, trivia and science geeks!).


We took a lunch break at the highest point of our ride. The view was classic Greece!



Drohgarda Cave is a 3,000,000 year old cave that was discovered by children sometime in the 1600's.








After touring the caves, it was beer o'clock!



It was all down hill back to Sami, and so we finished a great day, our last full day in Greece.

5 comments:

Daniel said...

What an awesome day!

mas said...

Holy Cats! I second Daniel: AWESOME DAY! What glorious pictures, all capped off with beer. It doesn't get better. That gorgeous lake reminds me of the cenotes in Mexico, which Suzanne and I will be visiting in July--how beautiful!

love, mas

anne said...

greece was sure great,looking forward to italy.

anne said...

greece was sure great,looking forward to italy.

Dave and Belinda said...

Thanks Daniel, we will miss Greece, BUT, we are sure we will torture you even more with descriptions of Italian food.

Jiminy gee willikers Mark! Great to hear from you! The Greek beer grew on me. I normally don't go for lagers, but the Greek beer 'Mythos' is pretty darn good. Have fun!

Hi Anne, as I have said we will miss Greece, but we had a pretty nice ride today, our first day in Italy, despite being exhausted from the 19 hours of ferry rides.

Love to all