Southern coast of Crimea

What to do in the Crimea when you got tired of the sea: - climb Karadag!

    The southern coast of the Crimea is known for the beauty of its landscapes, which combine mountains, forests and sea but even so Karadag stands out as an exceptionally beautiful place. Many poets, writers and painters have come to Karadag to seek inspiration here. The crags towering above the turquoise sea have never failed to impress all those who come to Karadag. In the early twentieth century a writer described Karadag in these words: "Karadag is a charming place, it seems to belong to the fairy-tale world rather than to the world of our harsh reality. Viewed from the sea, it looks forbidding, awesome, impenetrable. But it changes its aspect completely if viewed from the side of Otuz - Karadag looks like a gigantic concave sea shell, the edge of which, turned inland, protects it from the cold north and bitter east winds. Karadag possesses a wild beauty which is unparalleled anywhere else in the Crimea. The majestic mountain range of Karadag draws the gaze like a magnet - some of the aspects of it are ragged, bleak and stern, others are gentle, soothing, covered with green vegetation, still others stir imagination with strangely shaped rocks and cliffs, precipitous gorges, chaotic, fantastic scenery."

    Tourism in the Crimea allows to combine pleasure and edification. The Nikitsky Botanical Gardens has a wide collection of many species of plants; tasting of exotic fruit is one of the options provided for additional pay during a tourist visit to the Gardens. The Magarach Institute of Grapes and Wines has developed tours during which tourists can learn many things about history of wine making while visiting the Institute's wine labs; naturally, wine-tasting is a regular feature of these tours. At the Institute of Biology of Southern Seas one can see hundreds of species of fish, among them many exotic ones, and other sea animals in a huge aquarium. Dolphinariums in Sevastopol, Feodosiya and Yalta attract a lot of tourists. There are sightseeing tours organized to the Crimean Astrophysics Observatory and the National Space Control and Test Centre. Tourists always find both places extremely interesting.

The Crimea is known for its many resorts which are situated in areas of excellent climatic conditions. Some resorts have medicinal muds and mineral waters. There are over 100 mineral springs with chloride, calcic- sodic, radonic, thermal chloride-sodic and other kinds of waters.
The spa of Saki provides hydrocarbonate-chloride-sodic waters; the resort of Feodosiya offers sulphatic-chloride-sodic waters; in the area of Melas one can take sulphate-hydrocarbonate-chloride-sodic waters. The Kerch peninsula is rich in sulphidic waters; there are sulphate-chloride-calcic-sodic, carbonate, iodobromide and hydrocarbonate-chloride-sodic waters with a high content of sulphureted hydrogen. Herbs, mineral waters, salubrious air, muds and other substances with medicinal properties have been known from time immemorial.They have been used for treatment of various diseases for centuries. There are over 3,000 places in the Crimea which offer rest and health-improvement facilities. 54% of them are situated at the southern coast; 18% of them -in the central area of the Crimea; 10% - in the northern and in eastern parts of the Peninsula; the remaining 8% are in the western part of the Crimea.

    It was in the nineteenth century that curative properties of the Crimean climatic and natural conditions began to be realized. At first, several places (Alupka, Gurzuf, Livadia, Massandra) on the southern coast started to be built up with palaces and mansions for Russian tzars, their families and aristocracy.

    In late nineteenth - early twentieth century the Crimean southern coast became a fashionable place to visit by the upper classes but it was only in the twenties of this century that a definite turn was taken to combine rest and recreation with medical treatment (mostly heart and lung diseases).

    Today there are over 600 health-improvement and rest facilities in the Crimea, with about thirty percent of them situated on the southern coast and in the east, in and around the town of Evpatoria. Evpatoria is a centre specializing in providing rest and treatment facilities for children. Practically all the rest and health-improvement facilities in the Crimea are to be found within a short distance from the sea. 517 kilometers of beaches make the sea easily accessible to all those who come to the Crimea for rest and to improve health. Some of the health-improvement facilities (locally called "sanatoria") specialize in treatment of specific diseases (respiratory, gynecological, TB, cardiovascular, etc.) but a majority of them provide treatment of many diseases.

The main curative factor though in the Crimea is a unique combination of mountain air, evergreen vegetation and the sea. In spite of the economic crisis gripping the country, millions of people continue to come to the Crimea for rest and medical treatment. The Crimean government has turned to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine with a number of proposals aimed at promoting tourism, recreation and medical treatment in the Crimea. Among the measures to be taken is introduction of considerable discounts on railroad and air tickets for children and families with low incomes who have purchased vouchers for medical treatment and rest in the Crimea; reduction of prices for these vouchers. Recently renovated hotels provide a decent level of services and renovation of hotels continues.

BB, 7 days***, 105 USD + airticket

[ Up ]
Сказка 2000