Zakynthos and Olympia

The kids and I read a book a few years ago called ‘Halo’ by Zizou Corder, about a baby washed ashore on Zakynthos and raised by a family of centaurs. She is later kidnapped and in order to survive, joins the Spartan army disguised as a boy. The descriptions of the osland, its beautiful chalky white cliffs and the Blue Limestone Caves, inspired us to come here.

The world’s longest multi-span cable bridge now spans the Gulf of Corinth connecting Mainland Greece to the Peloponnese Peninsula. Previously it was only possible to cross over to the Peloponnese via an Isthmus at the top of the gulf.

The drive to the ferry at Kyllini takes a few hours, and we then spend an hour on the car ferry before arriving in Zakynthos and making the one hour drive up the island to our cheap beach-side hotel.

We’re getting used to crowds. Unless you want to journey to some far-flung island in the off season, there are going to be people everywhere. What sounded like a quiet little bay near the top of the island, turns out to be a bustling port with people arriving in buses and being ferried out to the blue caves and onwards to Navagio Beach (known as Shipwreck Beach because of its abandoned, rusted shipwreck sitting in the middle of the beach). This is perhaps one of the most frequented beaches in all of Europe (as we find out later).

Our arrival at La Grotta Hotel is met by a surly, chain-smoking Greek called Karlos, who directs us with all of our bags through the back entrance, strewn with foul-smelling kitchen cast-offs, up two flights of stairs, ignoring our requests to unlock the door that leads directly from next to the car, to outside our room.

Note: the reception doesn’t get much better for the remainder of our trip and we give up our daily greeting when it becomes obvious that the family at the La Grotta must have given up on customer service about ten years ago.

The first order of our first day is to find a place to swim, as Agios Nikolaos where we are staying, is overrun by deck chairs and umbrellas.
We drive to a little windmill where there are steps leading down to a platform by the sea, with a ladder and a jumping platform.

Louie is happy. Jumping from heights with a crowd looking on, is his new thing. Very quickly, the jumping platform is deemed too tame and he is scrambling up the rocks to a height of about eight metres.

His little body flying through the air is met with gasps from the crowd and an intake of collective breath as he hits the water. Soon, there is a queue to jump and Louie is a local jumping hero. He announces each jump with a loud 1… 2… 3… to make sure that everyone is looking.

Later, we drive to the look-out point of Navagio Bay where it seems you need to queue to get a photo. There is a precarious look-out point where people are having their two minute selfie opportunity then moving aside for the next person in the line. This is just too silly for us, so we clamber around the cliffs, following in the tracks of a whole lot of other people, to perch dangerously on the edge of the 150m high cliffs and lean out to get a photo. Roger has to walk away because he can’t handle us being up that high. We have all just had a rather large fight in the car which has left Louie in a reckless mood and I insist on keeping him close because I envisage him pushing one of us over the edge.

We visit the jumping spot again the next day. The Blue Caves are just around the corner but there are so many boats coming and going that it is too impossibly choppy to swim to them. Instead we spend our time swimming around a smaller cave, partly to patrol the water to make sure that Louie doesn’t jump on anyone from eight metres above.

We are happily snorkelling when a cave shuttle-boat comes careering towards the cave. The captain, seeing us in his way, starts gesticulating and shouting. I desperately start trying to pull Jasper, who has his head under the water, out of the way. The boat is not stopping and the people on it are looking alarmed and slightly horrified as he continues to abuse us from the deck.

Note: the transcript below is a representation of what he might have been saying to me. I don’t speak Greek.

Crazy captain: Σας ηλίθιο ηλίθιος (you stupid idiot)

εγώ θα σας τρέξει πάνω (I will run you over)

note: Finally, I reach Jasper and pull him out of the way.

Me: “You Arsehole!!”

CC: Η μητέρα σου είναι μια πόρνη (your mother is a whore)

Me: “We were swimming as fast as we could”

CC: μια πληγή για το σπίτι σας (a plague on your house)

Suddenly, the captain in another boat that is tied up waiting, starts shouting as well, while making a call on his phone. Suddenly I think I’ve overstepped the mark with my arsehole comment, until he gets out his boat hook and starts poking it at the crazy captain. Meanwhile the passengers on the Blue Caves sightseeing trip are still sitting on the boat in stunned silence while the two captains shout and abuse each other. I notice with horror that the crazy captain’s boat says La Grotta. No surprises there! There goes our complementary trip to the caves.

Crazy captain speeds off, cursing and the captain with the boat hook beckons us on to his boat and takes us to the caves for free. In truth, the caves are probably better in the morning when the sunlight is falling on them, but the light coming in from outside creates a beautiful deep blue when you’re swimming inside.

Kind Captain takes us on an extra long trip and we stop in several different caves before he drops us back at the jumping spot.

After the experience with the crazy captain and the general air of contempt at La Grotta hotel, we decide that my upcoming birthday should be spent somewhere where people might smile at us. We make plans to leave early and spend the night back on the mainland at Olympia. We look through trip advisor for the place with the highest friendly rating and book it for the night of my birthday.

That doesn’t stop us from enjoying Zakinthos, although when you are a family alone, you rely heavily on staying in places where the hosts are friendly and welcoming.

We head for the South of the island to the Keri Lighthouse and continue up the coast, looking for places to swim and rocks to jump off. These ones are a little high.

As much as it was our plan to take public transport, sometimes it is so great to have a car. Most of Zakinthos is inaccessible by bus and some of the roads are not good enough for a car either, but with me navigating, we give them a go! The fantastic thing: there are no other people and miles and miles of crazy coastline.

We stop and eat grapes and drink water from a well in a vineyard because that’s what you do in Greece!

And we end the day in a beautiful cove that I spotted on Google Maps.What was not immediately obvious from the satellite imagery, was the bar, deck chairs, ladders into the sea and multiple diving spots. There are another 200 people here too, but I didn’t get them in the photograph because it looks more romantic without them. Louie loves it. A crowd and a cliff to jump off.

Our last day in Zakynthos is spent waiting for our complimentary trip to the caves and shipwreck beach. We’ve decided that it’s safe to take the La Grotta boat as we’ve scoped out the port and ascertained that the crazy captain has probably been stood down for a few days after a visit from the police following a call from the other captain. As guests of La Grotta, we get last priority on their sightseeing boat and despite being up at 8am, ready for our trip, we don’t get on a boat until 12.30pm. By the time we get around the other side of the Island to Shipwreck beach, there are THOUSANDS of people there. We had heard it described as being a bit like D Day on the beaches. There are boats coming in with their horns blazing, swimmers trying to get out of the way, people clambering all over the ship wreck and taking selfies, toplessness, dogs, marijuana, you name it. We have only 40 minutes to spend here before we are picked up again. The beach is only accessible by boat as there are huge cliffs all around it. Despite the obvious detracting factors, this is a very beautiful place, with iridescent blue water like I have never seen. Because the sand is almost like a white chalk, the sea is even more blue.

We stop at the Blue Caves on the way home and decide, after the boat drops us off, to come back for a few more jumps and an early dinner at the windmill cafe.

 

Today is my birthday; I am 42! (I know, just a spring chicken.) It has that vague feeling of Mother’s Day about it, where you don’t want to get your hopes up but what you wish for most is that a. your kids will keep their wits about them and not have a massive fight and b. you won’t cry without friends to celebrate with, and with the precarious fragility of our family dynamic at the moment, I try to stay calm and positive. We pack up and farewell La Grotta without even a wave goodbye. The ferry and car trip to Olympia are without incident and I am even able to sit in the front seat as the kids promise they will not fight in the back seat. What a treat!

Olympia is a beautiful place. I have been here once before and I look forward to showing the rest of the family. I have sent a message to the hotel we are booked at (with the great friendliness ratings) and let them know that it is my wife’s birthday (I pretend to be Roger) and that she would like to be made to feel special. I’m learning to be proactive.

We arrive in our room to flowers, chocolate and champagne, all a gift from the smiling hotel staff. There is a nice pool and the weather is hot, so we lay in the sun and it strikes me that this is only the second time in my life that I have had a summer birthday. It is much easier to feel content in the sun, plus I remind myself that I am travelling the world with my family and therefore should feel like this everyday.

Sometimes it’s the simple things that bring the most satisfaction. Before I sit down to a glass of birthday champagne, I do all of the family washing in the bathtub and sit down and watch it dry.

We visit the ancient site of Olympia on our way out the next day, although it’s business as usual for the family today and half-way through our visit, we decide to split up to avoid a major physical public fight.

We drive to Athens via the Isthmus of Corinth and arrive in our very basic hotel for our last night in Greece.