7. KISSAMOS - ELAFONISSOS (see map )

This is a rather quiet route that goes through cultivated fields and small rural villages without particular interest.
Platanos is the largest village in the area with 1500 people who make a living out of olive trees and olive oil. Most houses are new and colourless, featuring walls made of concrete, but there are also

some old stone-built houses concentrated mainly around the foot of the hill at the east of the village. If you walk through the village you will see an odd mixture of the old and the new lying peacefully side by side: courtyards with age-old equipment used to make raki, traditional bakeries, old-time coffee shops where the elderly sip Greek coffee and have heated political discussions, and next to them modern cafeterias filled with young people who spend their energy and pocket money on electronic games.
Should you feel like staying for an evening and catching a glimpse of life in a Cretan village, the Rooms to Let Photopoulos are the most convenient accommodations. The restaurant next door is quite good and it belongs to the same owner.

As you leave Platanos from the south you will see an intersection with a Gr/E sign pointing to Falassarna. If you follow it, after five hundred metres you will have a beautiful panoramic view of the

Falassarna beach, the cape where the ancient town was built, and the valley south of it which today is full of olive groves and greenhouses.

If you are thinking about taking a swim, there is a small pebbly beach right in front of the ancient town, and a second quieter beach a little further to the north, behind the acropolis rock. A third beach, one of the best in Western Crete, with very fine sand, lies south of the town and is three kilometres long. Its most beautiful part, empty and clean and without “development,” is Pachia Ammos (“Thick Sand”), right in the middle of it. You will reach it if you take one of the many trails that go through the valley with the olive groves and greenhouses.

South of the archaeological site are a few pension houses and small hotels. These are fairly close to the beach, but not at its best part. Needless to say, there are many quiet spots for camping all along the beach.

Source of the information on this page : “Unexplored Crete”, Road Editions. For more guidebooks and maps of Greece, click here.