During the season, tourists are daily transported from Ierapetra to the inhabited small island of Chrissi, now lacking any source of drink water. It’s located 15 kilometers to the south from the city and is a heaven’s place. The journey takes only an hour. The ticket for a ship to the island costs 25 euros per person: the price is for the trip there and back.

The island is 5 kilometers long and 1 kilometer wide. Now it’s a cultural attraction – beaches with unique reddish sand, a corner where nudists sunbathe and an abode of silver gulls with ruins of the Minoan era and a Roman cemetery. In the north-west there is a chapel of St. Nicholas built in the XII or XIII century.

Chrysi (in Greek means “golden”) got its name because of the golden sand covering the whole island. It comes from fragments of shells. Inhabitants of Ierapetra adore this island and call it simply “Island”. It is said that many years ago, the president of “Ferrari” wanted to bay the island to make here a resort. Fortunately, the local people rebelled, and the island remains “free”.

The ground of the island consists of volcanic lava erupted from the depths of the earth many millions of years ago. The time formed here a kind of “dunes”, where growing Lebanese cedars, which have taken incredible forms under the influence of wind, feel perfectly. Many trees are more than two centuries old, and some of them reach a height of 10 meters. Practically in Europe, no such a thicket of relict Lebanese cedars have been preserved anywhere else.

The earliest mention of the island written by an anonymous person says that it “has a port and drink water”. In next message dating 1415, the famous cartographer Christopher Buondelmonti, a traveling monk from Florence, mentions “a flat, practically uncultivated island of hermits, mastic trees and cedars”. It is established meanwhile that the island was inhabited in the Minoan era. There were here several villages, and in the Byzantine time, it was successfully extracted the paint-purple as well as the salt – the latter until 1840. By the XV century, residents were completely banished by pirates. Generally speaking, they used it to camp since olden times along with local fishermen. And yet, taking advantage of its uninhabited nature, the peasants took out here their sheep for the winter. Today you will see grazing goats.

Visiting the island is tough to combine with a sightseeing of other places in the area of Ieraperta. You must count on the whole day. Be attentive to not miss the return ship.

Have a nice trip.