Kayaking the Ionian Islands of Greece

We took at 9 day kayaking tour of the Ionian Islands of Greece. We paddled for seven days and covered 64 nautical miles, which sounds like a lot more when you say we paddled 118 km. We started paddling on day 2 around the harbor in Fiskardo on Kefalonia.  On day 3 we took the ferry to Vasiliki on Levkada and then paddled to Sivota. On day 4 we paddled to Spartahori on Meganisi where we stayed two nights.  Day 5 was a short paddle around the island of Skorpios. Day 6 was our longest day where we paddled   around the north shore of Meganisi, then a 5 mile open water crossing to Kalamos and around Kalamos to the city of Kalamos for a total of 14 nautical miles. On day 7 we paddled across to the east side of Kastos and then made another 5 mile open water crossing to the island of Atokos where a water taxi picked us up and delivered us to Ithaca where we stayed two nights again. Day 8 we took a day off from paddling and toured Ithaca.  On our last day we skirted around the bottom tip of Ithaca and made a short two mile crossing back to Antisamos on Kefalonia where we ended our trip. (If you skipped all the details you can just follow our route on the map.)

We have a lot of kayaking pictures, and these probably don't look a lot different than any others, but here are a few highlights of the trip. We explored a lot of caves which were fun because they were shady and cool.

This cave is called Papnicolis cave.  We had lunch here along with a Bulgarian kayaking club. It is a very large cave which is supposed to have hidden a submarine during World War 2.

 This is the view from inside.

 We always took nice breaks from paddling where we had time to swim or snorkel or just play around. Here we are swimming on a beach that used to belong to Aristotle Onassis but now belongs to a wealthy Russian who has not made friends with the local population.

Tevas can be used as a flotation device in the salty Ionian Sea.

And it is possible to stand-up paddle a kayak.

We were a fairly small group of ten guests and two guides. Here we are getting the gear loaded for our longest day.

This is looking out across 5 miles of ocean and seeing our destination rising from the mist in the far distance.

A view of the group as we made our crossing. The water was quite calm and the morning was beautiful.

After we made it across we stopped on a beautiful beach on Kalamos for a swim. I think that is the Greek mainland in the distance.

Here we are in our big green tandem, not quite a sleek as our own red boat, but it served us well.

And I know you were waiting for this picture.  I have dozens of backward shots of Calvin, but this was the last day and he was making a very good pirate face.

And finally a picture of the goats that seem to be everywhere.

I should have taken a picture when we were a little closer, so you'll just have to trust me that those black and white animals are goats.