Nature

The dam of Ini – Mahera is located 38km south of Heraklion and next to Mahera and Ini villages. It was constructed in 2004 and has a capacity of 1750000 cubic meters.

The Gorge Maliaris starts near the village Peronides, passes west of the village Souvlos (from where a trail starts), merges with Hristopatimata gorge and ends at the beach Tzavlidon Vlyhada.

The Anonym Cave of Tylissos is located 16 km west of Heraklion, about 1 km before reaching Voulismeno Aloni, at an altitude of 250 meters. It was revealed in 2010 during the works for the new road connecting Tylissos with Anogia.

The gecko of Kotschy (scient. Mediodactylus kotschyi) is a common lizard species on Crete, which is very similar to the previous two, but belongs to a separate species. The major difference of this lizard with the other two gecko species mentioned is that it has a thin body and its fingers do not have suction cups.

On the road that connects Elounda with Kolokitha peninsula, on the site of the ancient city Olous, we meet the Venetian salt pans that functioned until 1972. We see dozens of cisterns separated by walls in the shallow sea, where water from the lagoon of Elounda was trapped early spring and evaporated till September.

The leatherback turtle (scient. Dermochelys coriacea) is the largest reptile in the world, with its shell growing up to 250cm and its weight, sometimes, exceeding 900kg. Infrequent appearances of the species have been reported in Greece (and in Crete), while there has not been reported any case of breeding on Greek beaches.

Just a few meters to the west of Tsoutsouros, the very narrow and smaller gorge of Troulla is formed. Being shorter than the Tsoutsouros canyon, it has attracted the attention of the canyoners and is very impressive with more than 15 beautiful waterfalls along its bed, the largest being 15m high.

The cave Chonos Sitanos is a sinkhole near Sitanos where there are many caves. The total length of the routes in the cave is 400m and the maximum depth is 94m.