About 25km south of Mustvee is the largest village on the lake, Kallaste.
Perhaps if relations with Russia improve it may become a large tourist centre as it
offers beaches and a potential yachting harbour, although at present no hotel. The
walk through the village offers two unusual sights - a series of redstone caves along
the shore and two buildings in the centre, the Town Hall and the Agricultural
College. Both feature Classical pillars, not what would have been expected from
the early 1950s when they were built.
In Kallaste you reach Lake Peipsi (Lake Peipus), one of the largest lakes in
Europe. This large lake has several names: in the north it is called Suurjärv
[Great Lake] and in the south Lake Pskov, while those two are connected by
a strait-like Lämmijärv. In Kallaste you are on the shores of the Great Lake.
The lake was called Peipsi for the first time in 1400, the Slavs gave it a new
name – the lake of the Chudes or the Tshudskoye ozero. The length of the
lake is 143 km, its longest width is 48 km. 237 rivers, streams or ditches flow
into it and only the Narva River flows out of it. There are 29 islands with a
total territory of 25.8 ha in the lake of which 5 islands are populated. The
wildlife of the lake is rich in species. With regard to fish Lake Peipsi is one
of the richest lakes in Europe: 37 species of fish live in it. The lake’s extraordinary
richness in fish was already mentioned in old chronicles and audit
reports.
In the 18th century the shores of the lake where Kallaste is situated today
were settled by Russian Orthodox Old-Believers who had escaped from religious
persecution in the Novgorod region. They began living here according
to their customs and traditions preserving them until the present time. In
Kallaste the red Devonian sandstone rock of the Aruküla layer crops out
and has given name to the place - Red Hill or Krasnaya Gora in Russian.
The coastal rock with a height of 8 m and length of 700 metres is covered
by moraine and sand and thus the total height of the bank is up to 11 m.
In some places the Kallaste Bank rises immediately from the water but
mostly there is a strip of sand between the edge of the water and the escarpment.
