katharo plataeu

well worth a visit to see stunning landscape and the real crete rather than the tourist traps. best way to see it is via a jeep safari

We took a Landrover Safari trip up here which meant we could both enjoy the truly amazing views. Our guide/driver was very knowledgeable and spoke perfect English (being an ex-pat). Plenty for the true traveller here as there's lots of culture, landscape, and history waiting to be discovered. Food in the mountain tavernas is excellent and authentic. Would do this again!

It is quite a long drive, but on a very good road. Go if you intend to walk, either alone or (preferably) guided. However as a place to drive to, have a drink/meal and return, there are more rewarding things to do.

When you first see the plateau, you can only imagine it was once a lake. It is such a flat area with soaring rugged peaks all around. The tiny villages are quaint and do take the trouble, providing you are averagely agile, to visit the Dhiktean Cave, allegedly the place where Zeus was raised by his mother. A great little attraction with impressive stalagmites and stalactites well atmospherically illuminated

Such a beautiful and magical place, totally unspoilt...don't really want to encourage people to go there to be honest!

As you drive up you get fascinated by the little villages you pass through and the change of scene together with the change of temperature. in midsummer you feelit grtting cooler & cooler the higher you go. It is unbelieveable how they constructed a road up there.

The views are fantastic and the road is ok as you drive up to the top of the Plateau. However, at the top the road surface is poor to non-existant and the signposting difficult to understand. We ended up going round in a circle on dirt tracks more suited to a 4X4 than the car we had hired! Several other cars appeared to be in the same predicament ... we never did find the road we were looking for and ended up going back the same way we had come!

From the village of Kritsa it is an awesome 11 mile demanding drive but the views are fantastic. However, unless you wish to drive on cart track roads you have to return by the same route. Refreshment is available in several tavernas at the top.

Despite having visited Crete more times than I can remember, I had never ventured up to the Katharo Plateau, so decided to give it a go after spending part of the day in Agios Nikolaos. You follow the road to the mountain village of Kritsa, after which the road starts to climb sharply, affording jaw-dropping views back towards Agios Nikolaos. At 1150 meters above sea level, the Katharo is considerably higher than Lassithi but is way less developed or cultivated. It has no peripheral road as does Lassithi but a series of tracks, some pretty rough, that lead to the few small villages up here. Rusticity is the word here, little black clad old ladies, and the occasional farmer riding a ricketty three-wheeled tractor that in many places, would have been consigned to the scrap yard years ago.We stopped at a taverna in one of the villages, Kopraki, and for once, were rather pleased to find that neither of the people in that taverna spoke any English, so we ordered our drinks as best we could and sat outside, in the shade from the heat, although it was considerably cooler here than down on the coast.If you have a 4 x 4, it is possible to access the Lassithi plateau via the dirt road that runs north from Kopraki, to join the Neapoli - Lassithi road a kilometer or so east of Mesa Lassithi. Next time we will bring a 4 x 4 rather than a Peugeot 206 and make that ride. Wonderful.

Took this trip in our hire car on the recommendation of a local gallery owner. "see the wild trees and landscape" she said. She was right, the higher up you go the more rugged the land scape. Plenty of opportunities to stop, take photographs and enjoy the views. look out for the goats in the trees!! On reaching the plateau you can stop for a drink and take a walk, we ended up taking a local dog for a walk as it joined us. A nice place to see if you want some thing a bit different, will be going back again this year, only thing is do not be put off by the road at the beginning, it does get better.

go in the day as dangerous roads at night a real worthwhile visit especially if your a photograper. we timed it too late and got caught out. my photos were all blue but good.

Located a few miles from Agios Nikolaos high up in the mountains beyond the lovely village of Kritsa is the Katharo Plataeu. You take a mountain road from Kritsa and just keep climbing higher and higher with the veiws back down to Ag Nik and the coast just getting more stunning the higher you climbed. We stopped on the way up at a rickety table and chairs for a picnic and just admired the amazing views. Then it was time to climb even higher up the mountain side, thinking "surely we can't go any higher and there can't possibly be a fertile plateau all the way up here". Then we turned a corner and all of a sudden the most amazing plateau just opened up in front of us, it was like an African Plain. Because the entrance is higher than the plateau so that you drive down in to it the first impressions are possibly even more spectacular than those of the more famous Lassithi Plataeu. The road then turned to a dirt track and we just explored various tracks through the plateau the car clunking and clanging as we went along. It truly felt like real Crete where the locals just lived off the land. It was also hard to believe that this "little world" went on so high up in the mountains. We then returned to the entrance to the plateau where we stopped at a lovely taverna (Stepeos) for a cold drink and some meze before making the descent back to Kritsa. On the same day we visited Ag Nik first thing in the morning before heading to Lato, then up to the plateau before wandering round Kritsa. It certainly made for a great day out :-)

Μοναδική η διαδρομή. Εκπληκτική η θέα απο εκεί.Έχει ωραία ταβερνακια για φαγητό. Τα έχεις όλα καθαρό αέρα, θέα, ησυχία και καλό φαγητό.

Είτε καλοκαίρι, είτε χειμώνα, το τοπίο είναι μαγευτικό και με την κατάλληλη παρέα θα ζήσετε στιγμές αξέχαστες. Επιλεξτε να πάτε σε κάποιο καφενείο κάτω στον κάμπο ή ακόμα καλύτερα σε κάποιο "μετόχι". Σε 16 χλμ βρεθείτε σε ένα άλλο-μαγευτικό κόσμο!!

Прекрасное место, тут стоит побывать, природа виды, культура. Правда в сильную жару очень трудно заставить себя вылезти из автобуса.