We were actually planning to rent a car and drive around the island, but since that hadn't happened yet, we had to rent a steam train. Did you notice, by the way, how smoothly I adopted the flashfuture technique from season 4 of the already tiresome TV series Lost? A flashfuture is like a flashback, only in reverse, into the future. Do you know, by the way, what setting your teeth on edge actually means? This concept definitely has a connection to the fact that I can't eat a lot of apples or berries. The acids in them make your teeth ache when you chew, and then for several hours you can't put anything in your mouth at all. Although good old Ushakov disagrees with me.
To set one's teeth on edge — to get an astringent sensation in the mouth after eating something sour or tart, or to tire one's mouth out by prolonged chewing of something.
I was joking about renting the steam train. But not about the renting (we did rent it, at least one carriage for sure) but about the steam train — it was fake, drove on the road on inflatable tires, and possessed an internal combustion engine. Not enough romance for 9 euros (that's how much one ticket to the lake and back cost). But at the lake itself, there was plenty of it to spare. I visited there three whole times, even if not entirely of my own free will, but there's nothing to regret anyway. Had I known that it's barely 5 km from the hotel to the lake, I would have walked.
According to the legend (probably a fresh one, for the tourists) the spirit of a girl lives in the lake. She distinguished herself by the fact that when she went to the field on errands with her father, she started combing her golden hair. Her father lost his mind, he lusted after her. Then the girl, not being a fool, yelled “Voula and voulolimna”, which means “Let my spirit splash into the lake”. Immediately a lake formed on this spot, and the father drowned. Alright, I confess, I added the last detail for tragedy. In reality, the story is silent about the father, but locals periodically see a blonde with a comb on a rock in the middle of the lake.
I'm not surprised — first of all, up to the place where the water is dark blue, it's very shallow, and you can easily stand on the algae that fill the entire water column right up to the surface. Secondly, if the sun bakes your head, you'll see crazier things than that.
I had an awesome swim at the lake, then we rented a pedal boat catamaran for 7 euros. And we took a ride along the 3.5 km long perimeter. Fortunately, it's that much on the outside, but significantly less on the inside, because all the shores except ours were cordoned off with nature conservation markers. By the way, they talked our ears off about freshwater turtles, but we never found them. On our last day in Crete I was told that they like to climb out and bask on a sunny day, but it seems this is a legend from the same category as the blonde spirit. True, Andrey said he saw a turtle under a bridge while we were riding the pseudo-steam train, but I am inclined to attribute this to delirium tremens from Andrey's constant consumption of wine and beer. As a result, Sergey figured out that by "turtles" the locals mean the annoyingly chirping beasts of unknown species in the trees, nothing else. After that, we heard these "turtles" everywhere we went for a long time, and once we even saw their true form, but more on that later.
We, being greedy, sat on a bench — especially since we have free sun loungers at our hotel, why should we pay for half an hour. But the lake is beautiful, truth be told, the white mountains are reflected and the water color is amazing.
The "turtles" are chirping away in the tree, and Tanya is so hot that she even dropped her strap to the side. I'm not sure this thing is called a strap, but I don't know a better word anyway.
As for the way back, I lost all our tickets, and was a bit nervous about it. But my colleagues, who by that time had also figured out the gimmick of the Cretan national character, calmed me down. And true enough — the driver, having found out that we didn't have a ticket, simply asked where to drop us off (in Kavros, naturally), and went off to steer his steam train. That's how it ended.