Zakynthos: places, stories and suggestions

Zakynthos island, also known as Zante, was the destination of my holiday in August 2017.

Most of you will have already seen the picture of the Navagio beach or at least heard of it. Despite the island’s reputation, it was not easy for me to find a good overview of what to do once I’ll be arrived here.

I will try to be quite exhaustive regarding the fundamental notions. I will skip some subjects on purpose, if you have any doubts you can contact me here.

Let’s start with a brief introduction to the Island, then I’ll give you some suggestions about accommodation, places and activities.

The island is located in the Mediterranean Sea, in the archipelago of the Ionian Islands, in the western part of Greece.

Populated since the Neolithic, the first literary traces of Zante are within the Homeric poems. Among the various historical events, certainly the most evident today, is the colonization by the Venetians from 1484 to 1797. There are many signs of the passage of this people:

its nickname, “To fiore tou Levante” (“The flower of the Levant”)
the presence of typical Venetian architecture. It was nice to get lost in the city of Zakynthos, and in other inhabited centers, observing historical buildings present allover the island

Many Italians also know this island for the Pre-Romantic sonnet written by Ugo Foscolo in 1803: To Zakynthos.

Today Zante is a popular tourist destination for its sea, its beaches, its marine fauna and, among the youngest, the low-cost alcoholic beverages in Laganas.

Before we getting into on our new journey, there are few basic things to know about Zante:

Drink ONLY water from sealed bottles. Most hotels offers large water dispensers, like those you can find workplaces. DO NOT drink water from those distributors, it is marine water purified on the island and not drinkable for tourists
Respect the animals! Allover the islands you will find small wooden structures that protect the turtles’ eggs. These animals lay their eggs on all the sandy beaches of the island and it is important to preserve them. This note could seem obvious, but when I met the first turtle from the boat that I rented together with other friends, it was really amazing watching her swimming below us. I recommend visiting the Turtle Center / Museum, to better understand how to respect them and how to avoid small actions that can damage their life.
Waste your rubbish inside trash-bins, unfortunately this beautiful island is very polluted due to the rubbish left everywhere. Why don’t you try to leave it as clean as or, why not, better than you will find it!

Party nights

If you prefer nightlife (I am talking to young people from 16 to 26) just go to Laganas! In this real Land of Toys, you will easily find all kinds of nightlife fun. I found a lot of posts of pub and discos offering cocktails for 2.00€ and shots for 0.50€. The quality of alcohol is very low and, looking on the internet, there are many articles that tell of kids being intoxicated by strange cocktails sold here.

So have fun, but watch what you drink.

On the peninsula to the east of Laganas and south of the city of Zakynthos town, many beaches offer evening and all-day entertainment. If you can’t stay without a drink and music on the beach, you’ll probably find something interesting here.

Regenerating calmness

If you came here looking for a relaxing vacation, sun, sea and nature, I recommend you to wake up early and visit wild places almost everywhere outside Laganas.

The South-West. In the Keri area, it’s possible to rent a boat to reach the island of Marathonissi, various bays and the neighboring beaches. In the port area there are a couple of diving, for those interested in exploring the seabed. If you prefer to stay on the land, I recommend Keri sunset, for a drink, during the colorful sunsets.

The strip of land on the South-East, offers long sandy beaches like Gerakas, Dafni and other points of interest.

The East coast, starting from Tsilivi, passing through Xigia and bring us to the North with its Blue Caves passing by long beaches, coves and thermal waters surrounded by a crystalline sea.

To the North West you will find Navagio, the famous shipwreck beach!

Going down the West coast, there are many bays to visit, Porto Vromi, is one of these. I have visited many of these coves just passing through because they are a little awkward to reach. Remember to well check distances before leaving your hotel because there is no road that follows the coast and the journey may become quite long.

There are many good quality restaurants in Zakynthos. Fish and other Greek specialties will be at your disposal at reasonable prices for lunch and dinner.

I recommend you to search on TripAdvisor for local restaurants, I have always relied on this tool and it didn’t disappointed me.

The typical local dishes are similar to those of the rest of Greece: yogurt, cheese, salads, meat, fish, etc …

I was lucky because, the village where I stayed, often prepared spit and other types of meat. In another situation I would not resist to restaurants that offer the skewered meat.
Fish dishes are obviously another specialty. I tasted some local fish dishes for lunch at Dafni and it worthed the price. Dishes I choose had a great attention to presentation and flavor. The bill was a bit more expensive than average but justified by the quality and location of the restaurant.

As in all tourist destinations, there is a multitude of different accommodation type available.

There are many hotels and most of them offer all-inclusive packages. Make some consideration about what type of vacation you are looking for before booking the hotel. By reading the introduction part of this article you will have targeted which area to choose and which formula to use. Regarding the type of treatment, consider that a meal in a restaurant is generally cheap and if you want to visit the island you will often have lunch outside of your hotel.

B&Bs are available almost everywhere, even in less crowded areas. They are not advertised as mush as in Croatia or Cuba, so I recommend using AirBnb or Homeway.

The island also offers facilities for camping enthusiasts. Then the more adventurous, while I was walking in search of a rock where I could lay on the sun, I noticed some tourists making free camping. In this case I can’t tell you whether it’s allowed or not.

My choice: my consideration was that I was on a relatively small island, so I booked at the all-inclusive Keri Village & Spa resort. It is not a luxury resort, but offers everything you need for a good staying. Normally I would have chosen other types of accommodation. In this case I felt comfortable here, despite if I spent most of the time outside the village and did not make full use of all available services and the all-inclusive formula.

Cars

The car was my first choice as a conveyance. Looking at the period it is generally not recommended renting a scooter due to the many careless drivers. In August here, as in all the Mediterranean islands, it is difficult to find a car to rent and when you will find it, it will be really expensive. After about an hour of internet searches and phone calls, I was able to book a car at a price I thought was appropriate. I went to the rentals to pay and collect the car, but when I saw the bill it was much more expensive than agreed without any valid explanation. I gave back the bill and I decide not to pick up the car and go back into my research.

Scooter

After the car experience, walking around Keri Beach, I found a good guy who rent cars and scooters. He had finished the cars too, so he offered me an Aprilia SR 125 in very good conditions. After some negotiation I closed the deal. Unlike many others, he told me that I had no limitations on places to visit. The only flaw of that lease was that it was not possible to activate a Kasko on the vehicle. The guy managed to convince me by giving me a couple of simple tips to preserve the scooter: pay attention to where you park and drive carefully (the road is generally in an acceptable condition but in some places it is easy to slip away).

Driving the scooter, I found myself a couple of times having to counter-position to recover the rear wheel that, suddenly, slid on the asphalt of the turns most frequented by work vehicles. Despite some thrills like that, I rode the SR for 7 days without any problems.

If you decide to rent one, drive carefully and slow down before entering into turns.

Usually I prefer to move independently, to explore the less traveled and less crowded areas. As already mentioned, in this journey I broke some of my rules. In Zakynthos organized tours have their usefulness, they allowed me, by investing a day in the boat, to steal all the information I had not found on the internet.

I booked a tour all around the island, from a kiosk that I found while walking in the port of Zakynthos town. This was the only tour package I bought: too many people on the ship and too little space. It was however a good starting point to understand the morphology of the island.

Zakynthos offers many spectacular places to visit, I had the pleasure of visiting most of them from different perspectives. I drove the scooter to the top of the highest peaks, I landed in the boat on the most beautiful beaches and, as a diver, I explored the seabed.

When I was riding the scooter, I set myself two main goals: Navagio and Xigia. The rest of the time my exploration method was: point the finger randomly on the map and go. If the path offered something interesting, I just stopped the time needed to appreciate it and ride again. I had guidelines learned during the boat tour but, even if I had traveled randomly it would have been difficult to make mistakes.

Of all the goals, these are the ones have remained the most impressed in my memory.

The name of the beach came from the ship wreck that lay on it. It is a cargo ship, coming from Turkey in 1980 and stranded in a shoal during a storm. The information about the wreck and its crew are not certain because, after the accident, the crew disappeared, leaving the ship and its cargo of smuggled cigarettes and alcohol.

Originally the beach was not so extensive, the location of the wreck reduced action of the sea on the overhanging cliffs. Thanks to this fortuitous barrier, the debris quickly accumulated, giving rise to this very white beach and its blue water.

Dafni

The stop in Dafni lasted more than half day. One thing you need to know if you go here by car: you have to pay for the parking.

Once parked the scooter int he Italian way, without paying the park, in the shade of a tree, I started walking along the beach. Here the sea is not very deep and it is possible to walk in the water even tens of meters from the shore. After the long walk, I choose a small restaurant that offers fish specialties and had lunch there. I enjoyed lunchtime, the staff was very friendly and the bill was slightly above the island average but justified.

Gerakas

Located on the tip of the peninsula, south of the city of Zakynthos, this fine sand beach won the TheodorATW award for the most beautiful beach on the island.

Today it is shown abandoned to itself, you can see the signs of its glorious past. The lifeguard stations, ruined by time, are unsafe. The only form of hospitality is a boy who, in a corner of the beach, rents sun beds and umbrellas.

Perhaps also thanks to the decrease in human presence, this is still the turtle’s favorite beach. Hundreds of them come here to lay their eggs. When you decide to visit it, remember to respect wild animals and pay attention to the small wooden structures that protect the eggs!

Navagio (Shipwreck Beach)

We have already told the story of the beach, now, once landed on it, has come the time to break the magic. Probably you didn’t note my observation regarding the most beautiful or most photographed beach in the world, in my previous paragraph about this beach.

There is a reason behind this small detail. My practical spirit downgraded the beach after walking on it. Beautiful colors and spectacular appearance from above, but its composition makes it quite uncomfortable when crossed barefoot. In fact, it is not composed of a very fine white sand, as one would expect, but of billions of pebbles, often annoying and sharp. So, if you get there, don’t forget your thongs!

Tsilivi Beach

To conclude this overview about various places that I visited, I will also talk about this place that I appreciated a bit less.

Tsilivi Beach is a long sandy beach that is located near the town of Tsilivi. It was one of the milestones that I marked on my map but then I just passed through here. I just spent few minutes in the center and a peek at the beach. I didn’t even get off the scooter and left at the next stage. It was not the kind of beach I was interested in… many nearby accommodations, equipped beaches, amusement parks and too many people.

Scuba Dive

Most dive sites are located in the south of the island.

On Dafni beach there is a diving for beginners, they offered me a dive at 6m depth which I kindly refused. So I don’t know about the quality of this 6meters sandy dive.

I dived close to Keri Beach. There are two diving centers, the largest is a bit far from the harbor and it is run by Germans. I chose the smaller one on the Keri Beach harbor. I found it good despite being a lot less crowded than the other one. The guide was really careful and well managed a panic moment of a girl who dived with us. The only less positive point is the equipment, it can be improved, the dispenser that I rent was a bit mushy.

My dive was pretty at a landscape level, we swam along an endless wall that was disappearing into the abyss. Regarding the inhabitants of the seabed instead I was not very satisfied. The sea has been plundered by unregulated fishing for years, only recently the action of fishermen has been limited. When I immersed myself, the population of the seabed was comparable in variety to the Avigliana Lakes.

Base Jumping

One of the main attractions of the island is Navagio (The Shipwreck Beach), looking for photos and videos of this beach, YouTube (which knows my tastes better than me…) suggested me a series of adrenaline videos. In that way I discovered that Navagio is the Base Jumper‘s paradise.

Browsing through this long list, I discovered a last video where, thanks to the shape of the cliff overlooking the beach, a group of Base Jumpers made a still visible installation for the Rope Base Jumping. Reverse yourself 7 minutes to watch this video and see what I am talking about!

Short history

Basic information

Overview

Party nights

Regenerating calmness

Plan you trip

Food

Lodging

Transportations

Cars

Scooter

Quads

Tours

Boat trip

Glass bottom

Places to see

Landscapes

Navagio (The Shipwreck Beach)

The Blue Caves

The Keri Gulf

Keri Caves

Keri Sunset

Beaches

Xigia

Marathonissi

Dafni

Gerakas

Navagio (Shipwreck Beach)

Other palces

Vromi, Roxa and Limnionas harbors

Tsilivi Beach

Sports

Scuba Dive

Cycling

Running

Base Jumping

Conclusions