Exploring by car

Vasilikos Peninsula

We had a late start today, leaving the hotel around 1000 to explore by car, parts of Zakynthos that we hadn’t seen.

Since we explored the north yesterday, I thought we would explore the south today, especially the Vasilikos Peninsula.

We started driving down the northern side on which there is a road, through fairly built-up areas.  Towards the end, we came to a beach club called Banana Beach.

It wasn’t our kind of thing to pay for a lounger and sun ourselves.  I go brown in 10 mins and Kim burns to a crisp in the same amount of time. Besides, the beach and water there wasn’t nice at all.  It wasn’t very swimmable at this time, which was seemingly low tide.  The set-up was lovely though, trying to be a little classier than any of the places in Laganas.

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We continued to tip of the peninsula, crossing to the southern side to Gerakas Beach.  This was reputedly the nicest beach on the island but what a disappointment!  It wasn’t any nicer than Banana Beach in terms of the sand and the water.  Again, it was also very shallow and not very swimmable at this time.

The only thing impressive about the Gerakas Beach was the fact that it was a turtle nesting beach co-existing with a public recreation area.  There was someone there giving information about the conservation rules to every newcomer to the area.  The no-go nesting areas were clearly cordoned off.

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Old Olive Tree

It was only 1115 by the time we were done at Gerakas Beach.  We had to come up with a plan for the rest of the day.

We decided to explore some of the rocky beaches on the west coast that came highly recommended for the clear waters.  We drove through the main town of Zakynthos heading north before stopping briefly at Exo Chora which had a very tortured-looking olive tree.  It is reputedly over 2000 years old.

We stopped for lunch at a taverna at Agios Pantes overlooking a field of olive trees before cutting out to the coast on a steep windy road down to Porto Vromi.

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Porto Vromi

Porto Vromi is a narrow inlet with a tiny sandy beach.  But what it lacks in terms of size, it made up with its beauty.  The water was crystal clear and the row of rental boats along the side didn’t seem to bother me.

This is also the place where boats also go to Navagio Bay and we enquired for tomorrow.  They offered to book us in for tomorrow for EUR25 instead of EUR30 and it made sense for us to do it to kill the day before flying at 2015.

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Porto Limnionas

We continued to Porto Liminionas.  The road heading down there was even more treacherous than to Porto Vromi.

But the drive was worth it as Porto Liminionas was absolutely stunning.  It was a long rocky inlet which we could descend into carefully from the rocky side, for a cool swim.

After a disappointing morning, we were very satisfied at our two afternoon swims.  We drove home happy, reaching the hotel around 1630.

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Porto vs Limani

We returned to Zakynthos town in the evening for a dinner on the waterfront.  The other dish I try to have in Greece is grilled octopus, so we tried hard to find a place that had it at a reasonable price.

In my spare time through the day I had been curious as to why Porto Vromi and Limnionas was referred to with the Italian word Porto rather than the Greek word Limani.  I finally had the chance to interrogate Chat GPT and other AIs.  The conclusion is that this part of Greece was under Venetian rule and Italian words did creep into the local lingo.  And in terms of tourism acceptance, Porto seems more romantic and relatable to foreigners.