Too old for backpacking but too young for cruising? Island hopping in Greece could be just the right kind of adventure, provided you have plenty of time and a healthy sense of humour.
There is something wonderfully reassuring about looking at a map before a holiday. You trace your finger along the islands, see them sitting neatly beside one another and think, Well, this should be easy.
That was our first mistake.
Having cut our teeth on the Cyclades, with their abundance of islands, plentiful ferry crossings and reasonably reliable public transport, we decided we were brave enough to take a step into the unknown, unknown to us, at least.
Our plan seemed simple enough. We would island-hop through five of the Ionian Islands: starting in Zakynthos, then onwards to Kefalonia, Lefkada and Paxos, and ending in Corfu. Looking at the map, they appeared to form a rather convenient line. We imagined ourselves gently hopping from one island to the next, ferry tickets in hand and all the smugness of seasoned travellers who didn’t need a fully mapped-out itinerary or a personal guide to see us through.
What we hadn’t appreciated was that the Ionian Islands may look as though they are in a straight line, but the ferry operators clearly hadn’t studied the map.
Fortunately, we had something that made all the difference: time.
Being retired meant we didn’t have to cram the whole trip into a precious two-week holiday. We could travel at a slower pace, allow time for things to go wrong and, most importantly, not panic when they did.
We also chose to travel in the shoulder season (April/May). This turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. The islands were slowly waking up from their long winter slumber. They were quieter, the temperatures were more comfortable and we could actually see some of the popular places without feeling as though we were part of a human conveyor belt.
There was, however, a small catch.
Some of the transport hadn’t quite woken up from its winter hibernation.
Zakynthos: The First Detour
Zakynthos to Kefalonia was the first leg of our trip. Looking at the map, this seemed like a complete no-brainer. The islands are close neighbours, separated by only a relatively short stretch of sea. On the map, the journey looked almost effortless.
Surely there would be a ferry.
There wasn’t.
Well, that is not strictly true. There is one at certain times of the year, but it wasn’t running when we needed it, nor, as we soon discovered, did it leave from where we had assumed it would.
We had based ourselves in Zante Town, away from the craziness of Laganas on the south coast.
Worth noting, though, out of season, Laganas is a rather different proposition from the summer madness. Less neon and fewer foam parties, more quiet streets and shuttered bars.
Our first problem came when we discovered that the ferry to Kefalonia left from Agios Nikolaos in the north of the island, rather than Zante Town. Agios Nikolaos is a considerable journey from the capital, and out of season there were no buses to get us there. A journey worth taking nonetheless. The rugged north of Zakynthos made the distance worthwhile.
A taxi was the obvious solution, but it wasn’t going to be cheap.
There was another problem. Even if we managed to get to Agios Nikolaos, the ferry didn’t start operating until the end of May and we were still in April.
At this point, our carefully planned island-hopping adventure appeared to be heading rapidly towards disaster. The alternative seemed to be spending four weeks in Zakynthos and changing our return flights from Corfu.
… Zakynthos, Kefalonia, Lefkada, Paxos and Corfu look like a simple island-hopping route on a map. In the shoulder season, Sue Atherton discovered that this is true only on the map.
Then, as two self-confessed technophobic oldies, we discovered the unexpected benefits of Facebook.
A well-targeted Facebook group turned out to be a goldmine. Suggestions came thick and fast from people who had either faced the same problem or had successfully navigated their way around it. There is a certain comfort in discovering that other travellers have gone before you, made the same mistakes and survived to tell the tale.
Armed with the collective wisdom of the internet and our new Facebook friends, we abandoned the idea of a leisurely ferry ride between two neighbouring islands and headed in what felt like completely the wrong direction towards the mainland.
Our route took us to Kyllini, where we had been told we could catch another ferry to Kefalonia. The ticket agent assured us it was an easy transfer: our ferry would arrive in Kyllini and, half an hour later, our ferry to Kefalonia would leave from the same dock.
It wasn’t quite the island-hopping experience we’d envisaged.
But it worked.
And this was our first introduction to the strange logic of Ionian island hopping. It wasn’t that we couldn’t get there. We could.
It just seemed that the easiest way to get from one island to another was to leave the islands altogether.
Fortunately, we were retired.
We had time.
Kefalonia – Beautiful Island, Questionable Bus Service
Kefalonia was well worth the effort, although it introduced us to another feature of travelling around the islands: the buses.
Now, I don’t want to be unfair to the Greek bus system. It gets people around and presumably works perfectly well for those who know how it works.
But for visitors trying to piece together an island-hopping itinerary, the timetable can occasionally feel as though it has been written by someone who doesn’t actually want tourists to go anywhere.
Nowhere was this more apparent than on Kefalonia.
Buses can be infrequent and seasonal, and they don’t always fit neatly with the itinerary you’ve carefully constructed in your head. Even journeys that look short on a map can take much longer than you might expect, sometimes involving a journey right around the island and at least one change of bus.
Kefalonia itself, however, is worth every bit of effort involved in getting there. Winding mountain roads meant that journeys which looked short on the map could take us around the island before we reached where we were going. Having time was a real advantage. Rather than rushing from one sight to another, we could stop when somewhere caught our eye, linger over lunch and enjoy the island at its own pace.
And then we made another discovery.
We had chosen to stay in Poros, the pretty port town where we had arrived from Zakynthos, and our hotel was conveniently situated right above the ferry port. By “right above the ferry port”, of course, I mean that our hotel was perched at the top of a hill that would have been much more appealing to a mountain goat or a Sherpa than to two weary travellers hauling their luggage in the heat of the day.
…Travel the Ionian Islands for the journey between them: neighbouring islands can mean ferries to the mainland, long bus connections and an unexpected night in port.
Perfect.
Except it wasn’t.
At least, it would have been perfect if Poros had been the port from which ferries to Lefkada departed.
They don’t.
The ferry to Lefkada leaves from Fiskardo, in the north of Kefalonia. Poros is in the south.
Do you see the pattern that was beginning to emerge?
This time, we bit the bullet and took a taxi to Fiskardo. Taxis don’t come cheap, so best to agree the fare before you set off, preferably while you still have the strength to argue about it, rather than after you’ve arrived and seen the price.
Fiskardo, however, turned out to be one of those happy accidents that travel occasionally delivers.
We loved it so much that we extended our stay twice.
And this is where having time really pays off. With time on your hands, changing your itinerary doesn’t have to mean cancelling something else or worrying about getting back to work. If you find somewhere you love, you can simply stay a little longer.
Fiskardo is a very different place in high season. In April, it was relaxed and wonderfully uncrowded, a far cry from the busy harbour it becomes in summer. It suited us perfectly, and gave us time to plan the next stage of our adventure: Lefkada and then Paxos.
Easy.
Or at least it would have been easy if the ferry company operating from Lefkada had been given its licence to operate.
Lefkada — Another Ferry, Another Problem
By now, you might think we’d have conquered all of the challenges.
We hadn’t.
Our Facebook friends were called upon once again, and they didn’t disappoint. We discovered that plenty of other travellers had faced similar problems trying to make their way towards Paxos.
Having booked our ferry from Fiskardo to Vasiliki on Lefkada, we set off with the intention of continuing our journey from there. We had taken the decision, rightly or wrongly, to use Lefkada as a transit island and not stay.
The sea was quite choppy on the day of our crossing and, at the last minute, our ferry was redirected to Nidri rather than Vasiliki.
In this case, the change actually worked in our favour. But it was another useful reminder that, particularly when travelling on smaller ferries, routes and arrival points can be affected by weather conditions, operational decisions and the whim of the captain, so it pays to keep checking rather than assuming everything will happen exactly as printed on your ticket.
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…Allow time between Ionian islands in the shoulder season: a ferry may start later in the year, arrive at another port, or leave you travelling north via the mainland.
The Long Way to Paxos
By now, we had stopped expecting anything to be straightforward.
Much Googling, Facebook searching and head scratching had eventually produced a route to Paxos.
It was possible.
It just wasn’t particularly quick.
Lefkada is something of an oddity in the island-hopping world because it is connected to the mainland by a bridge. Our plan was to travel from Nidri to Lefkada Town, catch a bus to the mainland and then make our way to Igoumenitsa, a port town on the mainland, where we could catch an onward ferry to Paxos.
Simple?
Not exactly.
On our journey, the shoulder-season bus from Lefkada Town to Igoumenitsa ran only on certain days – Friday and Sunday, to be exact – and the journey takes around two to three hours. Even in the height of summer, it only runs four times per week. The ferry from Igoumenitsa to Paxos, meanwhile, operates once a day in the morning.
The result?
An unplanned night on the mainland.
Igoumenitsa isn’t particularly inspiring as a tourist destination, but it is a pleasant enough port town and it has one very important asset.
The most wonderful bakery and coffee shop right next to the ferry terminal.
Sometimes all it takes to restore your faith in travel is a good coffee and a warm spanakopita.
We found perfectly adequate accommodation for the night and went to bed with one eye on the alarm clock, terrified that we would somehow miss our one opportunity the following morning to finally reach the prize: Paxos.
We arrived at the port ridiculously early. We checked, double-checked and then checked again which berth we needed to be at for our ferry.
Another trip to the bakery fuelled us for the expected ferry frenzy of crowds, cars, buses and general chaos all jostling for position the moment the ramp came down.
We needn’t have worried.
It was low season.
There were no crowds.
We boarded without incident and had most of the top deck of the ferry to ourselves.
After all that planning and worrying, it was almost an anticlimax.
…From Zakynthos to Corfu, the route runs through Kefalonia, Lefkada and Paxos — with Kyllini and Igoumenitsa becoming part of the journey when the straight line vanishes.
Paxos – Worth the Journey
Paxos was everything we had hoped for after our rather convoluted journey to get there. Small and olive-covered, it immediately felt like the kind of island where slowing down wasn’t just an option but the whole point.
The coastline is a succession of tiny coves and sea caves, best appreciated from the water. Just across the channel, Antipaxos is even smaller.
A boat trip took us around Paxos and over to Antipaxos, but even then, the temptation was to simply stop, swim, find a shady spot and enjoy the view.
Much of the island can easily be explored on foot. It’s small enough that getting lost is part of the fun rather than a cause for panic. You can’t stray too far before finding your way back to somewhere familiar.
After all our ferry and bus adventures, we had finally reached somewhere that seemed to be saying, quite firmly:
Stop rushing around. You’re here now.
Eventually, our journey continued to Corfu, our final island, with an easy, if a bit choppy, hop across from the Port of Gaios to Corfu Town.
By then, we’d become considerably more relaxed about transport. We had learned that the question wasn’t necessarily:
-How do we get directly from here to there?
It was more likely to be:
-How do we get from here to there and which bit of the mainland are we going to have to visit to achieve our goal?
What We Learned
Looking back, the transport problems were some of the most memorable parts of the trip.
They were certainly frustrating at the time, but they taught us something important about island hopping in Greece:
Don’t assume that proximity equals connectivity.
The fact that two islands are next to each other on a map doesn’t mean there will be a ferry between them. Routes can be seasonal, services can change and some connections simply don’t operate outside the main tourist season.
And leave yourself plenty of time.
If we’d planned this trip as a series of tightly connected journeys, we might have spent the whole holiday worrying about the next ferry. Instead, we had deliberately given ourselves more time.
That allowed us to accept the occasional detour without feeling that our holiday was falling apart.
There is a particular pleasure in travelling this way when you’re retired.
You suddenly realise that you don’t have to see everything.
You can sit down.
…On the Ionian Islands, a missed connection is not always lost time: sometimes it is the reason you find the charm of a harbour, a bakery, or an island you hadn’t planned to stay on.
You can have another coffee.
You can watch the ferry arrive.
You can wait for the bus.
And when the bus doesn’t arrive quite when you expected, you can laugh about it – eventually.
Our journey through Zakynthos, Kefalonia, Lefkada, Paxos and Corfu certainly didn’t follow the neat straight line we’d imagined when we first looked at the map.
It zigzagged and detoured and occasionally sent us back towards the mainland when every instinct told us we should be heading the other way.
But perhaps that’s what made it such a memorable trip.
Sometimes island hopping is about the unexpected journey in between.
Just go with the flow.
Preferably the flow of the ferry – if it’s actually running.
Useful links:
Ferryhopper will give you all of the best ferry routes and schedules
Ionian Pelagos is the ferry from Kefalonia to Lefkada
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