It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single Greek in charge of a kingdom must be in want of an island.
Many versions abound regarding Odysseus’ birthplace. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Ithaca know a good story when they see one, and even if Odysseus was born elsewhere, that hasn’t stopped the Ithacans adopting him as their own. Saatchi and Saatchi could not have improved the branding and merchandising. We have seen Odysseus Street, Odysseus Alley, Odysseus Travel Services, Odysseus Taverna, Odysseus Bar, Odysseus key-rings etc. You get the picture. Fortunately, Ernest Hemingway did not seem to have ventured down this way, or we could have seen a Clash of the Titans.
We sailed around from Fiskardo on Kefalonia to the delightful little harbour of Frikes on the north-east coast of Ithaca. This being April nothing was open (story of our travels so far). We peered in at the windows of the little mini-market, and a woman opened the door to tell us that she was open, but hadn’t put the lights on to save power as it was so quiet. And she was very sorry, but had no dairy products yet, as the fridges were expensive to run and there were no tourists yet to buy the produce. Such is the dystopian world of the pandemic, post-Brexit era and Black Sea war. We chatted for a while, she’d had two English husbands, and divorced both of them. I told her there were some good ones around! [Ed – I wasn’t offering]
On the quest of exercise and finding new sights to see, we walked across the top of the island to the bay of Polis, from where we could clearly see Kefalonia. Polis Bay is a pretty little fishing boats’ harbour, and has a lovely sweep with a couple of caves. Excavations of one sunken cave uncovered various artefacts relating to the story of Odysseus (a fragment of a facemask with an inscription to Odysseus, coins etc). This has helped Ithaca’s claim to be his birthplace.
Fortunately, Lord Byron only visited Ithaca for a week, so there is very little named after him.
Back on Kefalonia, we went into the harbour at Sami. “There are remains of an old castle on the hill” said Richard excitedly. “Let’s walk up and see them”. A couple of hours later we finally get to our destination (all uphill). It’s been a beautiful walk, lots of wild flowers, bushes and olive trees, and although there are no houses, the hillsides look landscaped. Masses of olive trees in fact. We reached the castle, Richard decided to go and explore, I needed to rest my leg (after a fall on scree a week ago). It was delightful – sheep and goats, their bells tinkling away, birds singing, I had 5G on my phone, and I could hear Richard scrambling around.
After about half an hour, I realised that the sheep and goats had fallen silent, and so had the birds. Where was Richard? And worst of all, I suddenly had only one bar of E on my phone. It was eerily quiet.
I could easily imagine an Australian school girl running down from the rocks in hysterics. The picnic was over, and I rang Richard. Who reassuringly answered, and said he would be back with me in 20 minutes.
After Sami, it was time to make our way down to our final island in the Ionian – that of Zakynthos. We set off from Sami, and as we sailed past the final tip of Kefalonia, we could see Zakynthos welcoming us in the distance. The main town, named Zakynthos, has a large harbour. There is a town quay, cheap and cheerful, or a reserved space quay where you can get water, and the booking agent will do all the paperwork for you. Bargain! We booked a space.
Now, at 40ft, Missy Bear is not one of the smaller boats. But they put us between great big hulking wooden day-tripper yachts, and we were like Lilliputians. But we were quite happy because strong winds were forecast and the larger boats gave us shelter.
Next door to us was a large motor cruiser owned by a charming Lebanese man, Nicholas (Nick). There were just two of them on board. His Turkish crew member had been with him for years, and went everywhere with him.
[Ed – Nick was in construction, but didn’t like working in Lebanon now because the economy was struggling, there are capital controls and invoices can take years to get paid. He has been based in the Emirates and was bringing his motor yacht back from the Red Sea where he had been helping construct a new resort, I think. His yacht started life as a sailing boat, but he had converted it and it now had a massive open plan wheelhouse and lounge.
He likes wood and there was a lot of it onboard. I asked, stupidly, if there was any cedar in the build, but Nick reminded me that most Ceder of Lebanon had been felled years ago (there and on Cyprus). And that those left were now protected.
The yacht had hit some pretty rough weather heading from Suez to Crete, and had some seriously big beam-on seas, which had not been at all fun. I gave him the url of an Italian website that is good for predicting and visualising the wave heights across the Ionian Sea]
Nick became a firm favourite of mine as his man passed hot espressos across to us now and then. Later on in our stay, he invited us on board for (more) coffees. He was very typical of that era of glamourous international jet-setters. He spoke better English than we did, his father, he and all of his sons had been to Millfield school in Somerset. He was now heading for Sicily, but would need to wait another week for the wind and large waves to settle.
And boy did the weather howl through Zakynthos. We had planned to stay two nights to let it pass, but woke on day three to thunderstorms and heavy rain, and made an executive decision to stay on again. Belgian yacht “Blue Eyes” was on the town quay, and we knew that he had planned to leave that day. But she stayed put also. But by the next day, Zeus (Greek god of weather) and Poseidon (brother of Zeus, responsible for the seas) were both smiling again, and we were able to set off for the Greek mainland, and our journey around the Island of Pelops.
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