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Melissáni Lake
2 kilometres from Sámi at Karavomylos, 160 metres long and 40 metres wide, stalactites dating back 16-20,000 years, with a small island in the centre 30 metres long with two small elevations - 8 and 9 metres.
You make your down a short cool passage way to the boats
In front of you lies the most extraordinary and irridescent lake, lit by the sun through the hole in the roof, 100 feet above above, where it collapsed from past earthquakes.
The boat takes you out across the lake as your captain tells you about the history and depths,
it is some 39 metres at its deepest and you can still see the bottom.
Fascinating rock formations and stalactites line the walls
The you venture into the enclosed part of the cave, only around 12 feet thick at the roof and lit to reveal the deep orange colours
As you emerge past the island created by the caving in of the roof, the colour of the lake seems even more intense than before.
The captains are a jolly lot and more than willing to take your photo, if you are so inclined.
Excavations in 1963 found oil lamps, a sculpture of Pan (seated) and a relief featuring nymphs dancing to Pan's flute (now to be found in the Archeological museum at Argostóli) hence the wall mounts on your way in down the ramp/steps. One school of thought is that Homer's Ithaca included Kefaloniá and that this was the cave of the Nymphs where the Phaecians left Odysseus. Another is that it took its name from the Greek for bee 'Melissa' and that bees entered the cave via small holes, using the stalactites to build honeycombs.
You can't get onto the original viewing platform (the semicircular hoop to the left of the picture) as it is deemed unsafe, so I held the camera over the barbed wire to get this view from above.
The Melissáni lake is fed by water from both the mountains and
The Mysterious Katavothres channel
and as such is brackish.