A Long-delayed return to Zante

The week before Easter we left Athens and went back to Zante for the first time in four years. I can’t remember if we planned it that way, but Easter is a good time to arrive anywhere in Greece – the weather’s good, and people are out and about, dressed in their finest. A burst of activity that dies down again until the tourist season starts a month or two later. We all went into town for the Easter Parade, but only Tina and Eoin braved midnight mass on the Saturday. Once, eight years ago, was enough for me and Al.

Each time we return to Zante there’s an inevitable period of adjustment. The rubbish, the state of the roads, the chorus of mutts barking through the night – it all takes a while to adapt to anew. With an absence of nearly four years, twice the usual, the alienation we felt this time was all the stronger.

The build-up around us had continued in our absence: our view of Laganas Bay has all but disappeared behind two new villas. The satisfaction, years ago, of spending a morning at Gerakas beach on the Vasilikos peninsula, looking at that same stretch of sand some ten kilometres distant the same evening! No more. Foot access to our nearest beach has been blocked (possibly illegally – the matter is in the courts). There are loud, aggressive dogs at the end of our driveway, our main walking, cycling, and driving egress into the world. The surrounding hotels are in the habit of disposing of blackwater into adjacent (i.e. our, and our neighbours’) fields. We felt a bit disoriented, and somewhat landlocked.

Four years of salty air (the sea’s only two hundred metres away) trapped in a house with no breezes to dispel it had left the internal walls of Koukla House in a sorry state. The exterior wasn’t so bad, although the swifts had moved into a balcony overhang leaving their calling cards all over the balustrade. And the less said about the garden the better. We sought professional help. An English chap called Scott had recently moved to Zak with a view to establishing himself in property management, so we engaged his services to get some painting, drilling, caulking, and whippersnipping done. To mitigate our beach access problems, he cut a makeshift gate in our fence.

Just to ground ourselves in the culture again, one of the first things we did that Easter week was to have Tina’s cousins George and Angela and their kids over for a music session. It was reassuring, not to mention great fun, to be able to reconnect via island cantades with our friends so quickly, but since then we’ve barely seen them. Greek kids seem to spend a gruelling amount of time in extra-curricular study, making up, in their own precious time, for the shortcomings of the national school system.

The world had changed since last we spent a decent chunk of time here. Covid had come and gone, leaving behind it the possibility of remote work. From the comfort of her bed here in the Mediterranean, Tina started logging onto her (Australian) Air Force job at around 6.30 every morning. Eoin would start his Brisbane School of Remote Learning videos a little later. I had some web development work that I could take care of any time during the day (it’s dried up now).

Maybe for psychological reasons, one of the first hikes we did, on my 56th birthday no less, was to get ourselves back on top of the island again. The west side of Zakynthos is dominated by a mountain ridge running southeast – northwest, peaking at 756 m in the form of Mount Vrachíonas. We’d done this walk before, and knew it to be an easy one. From the village of Maries you drive to a quarry not far from the top and walk for about half an hour to get to the summit, stopping of course to smell the anemones, celandines, and orchids. Cephalonia’s much higher (1,628 m) Mount Ainos was clear as day some thirty or so kilometres north. The rest of the walk is just a descending corkscrew back around the peak, during which the rest of the island unveils itself bit by bit.

A resolution successfully kept

One particular resolution of mine this year was to fully profit from our proximity to the sea to do more watersports, be that kayaking, taking boat trips, skimming stones, anything. With a house in Queensland blocked from the sea not by a villa or two but by Lamington and Springbrook National Parks, here on the island we’d be but a stone’s throw from the watery stuff for four to five months. I didn’t really care what type of activity we did, as long as it got us out into the water more.

It was a tough choice between a kayak and a stand-up paddleboard, but in the end we plumped for the versatility of an inflatable SUP. We promptly ordered one from Greece’s own Aquasup, which arrived on the island in little over a week. The Atlantis can effortlessly take two people, as you can see, and if you’re prepared to ship a little water and lose control over the craft, three. From house to water takes seven minutes, with not much more shoreline preparation than attaching the main fin and strapping on the leg cord.

So far we’ve only brought it out deflated (the board, not us) twice; once at Dafni, when having started to pump it up, we were told by a bossy National Marine Park of Zakynthos woman that we weren’t allowed to use it there on account of the nesting turtles – fair enough – and once at Kalamaki, where no such restrictions applied (we’d learned our lesson and checked). On that occasion we actually paddled amongst a couple of friendly loggerheads.

Something else I’d wanted to do this time around on Zakynthos was to go against my nature and brave a fish meal, in which the fish looked like a fish, not a cleaned-up fillet. I’m not a vegetarian, but I am a squeamish and reluctant meat (and fish) eater. There’s a good fish taverna called Arodou (which is, as far as I could tell, a nautical term meaning ‘the offing’) on Ammos Square, away from Zakynthos town’s centre. Punctuated by blasts of the Levante Ferries ships’ horns, announcing their comings and goings to Killini and Cephalonia, we picked our way one Friday evening through lavraki (sea bass), tsipoura (sea bream), and good ol’ kalamari. There were a lot of bones, as I’d feared, but we had to graduate past our usual meal of gyros, which are tasty, but essentially are just fast food. Since that night I’ve located a local ichthyopólis (fishmonger) and bought lavraki a couple of times. The results aren’t always great, but I’ll get there.

Otherwise, we’ve kept ourselves busy walking on empty (but not for long) beaches and strolling through the olive grove labyrinths of Porto Koukla. Recently, Alexander took the ferry and bus to Athens for a gig. I bought a new bike. Before it became too hot to do so, we clocked up some 2-to-3 hour walks around Exo Chora, Cape Skinari, and Dafni, walks in which you can completely forget the mass tourism for which the island is (in)famous.

Repeating the spectacular success of 2015, in early June we togged up in 17th-century Venetian silks and minced through the streets of Zakynthos town, to the general bemusement of the sunburnt tourists. The annual Giostra is a reenactment of the centuries-old jousting celebrations held here in Zakynthos.

As I write, we’re over halfway through our stay on the island, with just over two months left. We have a Polish family staying downstairs, friends we made in the two weeks we spent in Poland in 2015. As soon as they leave, we’re off to Sicily (except for Alexander, who’s gone to Albania with his friends. There’s talk of Montenegro). After that, we can relax.