Just north of Haniá, the Akrotíri peninsula loops around to protect the Bay of Soúdha and a NATO military base and missile-testing area. In an ironic twist, the peninsula's northwestern coastline is fast developing into a luxury suburb; the beach of Kalathás, near Horafákia, long popular with jaded Haniotes is surrounded by villas and apartments. STAVRÓS , further out, has not yet suffered this fate, and its beach is absolutely superb if you like the calm, shallow water of an almost completely enclosed lagoon. It's not very large, so it does get crowded, but rarely overpoweringly so. There's a makeshift taverna/ souvláki stand on the beach, and a couple of tavernas across the road, but for accommodation you need to search slightly south of here, in the area around Blue Beach , where there are plenty of apartment buildings but no low budget accommodation in summer whatsoever. On Blue Beach you could try Zorba's Rooms (attached to a taverna of the same name) which rents out apartments (tel 08210/39 010; 24-33).

 

Inland are the monasteries of Ayía Triádha (daily 9am-7pm; 1.20) and Gouvernétou (daily 7am-2pm & 4-7.30pm; 1.45). The former is much more accessible and has a beautiful seventeenth-century church inside its pink-and-ochre cloister, though ongoing renovations - the latest has turned one building into an olive-oil factory where the monks produce and bottle their own oil - on occasions make the normally peaceful enclosure more like a building site. Four kilometres north of Gouvernétou - which is in a far better state of preservation and where traditional monastic life can still be observed - you can clamber down a craggy path to the amazing and abandoned ruins of the monastery of Katholikó , built into a craggy ravine, and the remains of its narrow (swimmable) harbour.