The most amazing caves and we got a buddyboat!

Kefalonia

We are still at Kefalonia and monday morning we drove over to Sami on the east coast to visit Drogarati Cave.

It is about 90 meters to go down to the cave

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The cave was discovered 300 years ago and open for public in 1963. It was discovered when a strong earthquake caused a collapse that revealed the cave`s entrance.

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If you are lucky you can be the audince of a concert here.

Not much people at the end of the season, and it was early in the morning as well

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After exploring this amazing cave we had a stop in the city center of Sami

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After a short stop in Sami we drove to the even more amazing Melissani cave.

This cave was first explored in 1951 by a noted caving expert who found on the central hill a lamp from antiquity proving that this was once an inhabited and apparently used as a worshiping place for the good Pan

12. of August 1953 the great earthquake destroyed almost all buildings on Kefalonia. This disaster was the cause of much rebuilding work as the island have now come back to modern levels. As the ground over the underground roof of the cave collapsed when people return to the island they discovered for the first time the delight of Melissani cave

In 1959 they had some tests showed that the water in the cave came from the sinkholes at Katavothres

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They opened up the cave for the public in 1963.

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In the high season it is a lot of people going here and you can have to wait for a long time to come in. We didn`t have to wait an walked directly onboard at one of the boats. The skipper is guiding you around for about 15 minuts and tells you aboat the cave.

After our visit to the cave in Sami we drove west again to visit the town Lixouri.

When we came there we were hungry so we started with lunch

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The restaurant was in the middle of the square

Then we suddenly realized that if we should reach our next goal we had to leave this town pritty quick…

But first we had to drive to Paralia Xi to see this special beach with the red sand

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A lot of waves so we didn`t wanna swim here

Our next goal was Castle of Agios Georgios, east of Argostoli. But when we came there it was 30 minutes before the closed, and it was some hundred meters to walk first. So we dropped it.

After some shopping at Lidl and another big supermarket outside Argostoli we delivered the car and walked around the peninsula of Argostoli

Some beautiful houses and a lot of colours!

The statue of Nikos Kavvadias. He was a Greek poet, writer and sailor of profession

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A nice place to walk!

Here are the sinkholes were the water runs through the whole island and cames out in Melissani cave on the east side.

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The seawater inflow has a speed up to 3 m/s. The speed is strong enough to move the water wheel of sea mills. Particurlarly here, two watermills were found, which were destroyed during the 1953 earthquake, and today only the water wheel of one of them is remaining.

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Pritty amazing thing, and a beautiful place they have made here!

And outside they had a shelter for the homeless cats

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Our next stop was Saint Theodore Lighthouse. It would be amazing if it was a good sunset, but it was good enough. A family came there right before us so the kids are in the photo.

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I had a plan for this walk, and that was the monument for the italian guys. “Monument to the fallen of the Acgui Division” This is a memory of almost 9000 italian soldiers shot by the Germans in 1943. I don`t know what happend but we went wrong and came to this place instead. Also an important place, here was the place where the massacre took place. Unfortunately we didn`t realise this before we came back to the boat and it was dark.

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This was a good powerwalk, I think it was 9 km totally. Under way we received emergency message from the goverment about the weather next day, it should be very much rain and wind.

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We came back to Argostoli and it was almost dark.

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We prepered the next day for a lot of rain and wind, but it was so wrong! It was a bit rain, yes, but only a little bit, and the wind was not that strong. So in the afternoon (we had to wait for the siesta to be finished) we went over to Argostoli to check out the shopping.

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Not much shopping, only a couple of hours until we walked back to the boat to make dinner

A beautiful evening.

Next morning we were ready to leave Argostoli and Kefalonia. We sailed over to the fishing harbour to fill up the water tanks.

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And finally we met the turtles!

Norwegian Jade was also visiting Argostoli that day.

And together with Norwegian Jade we found Serenissima. Nothing special about the name, but the boat is actually build in Norway and has been use as “hurtigrute” in many years with the name Harald Jarl.

Zakynthos

When we came to Zakynthos we stopped at Xigia Sulfur Beach. You could smell the sulfur but it wasn`t that bad. A beautiful place and we anchored there alone.

In the morning people came to the beach early as there are not many sunbeds. But the sunbeds are in the shadow most of the day so it wouldn`t be my first choice…

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There are two caves there and it is fun to go inside to see. The water can be very warm, but then ice cold…

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You can see the sulfor in the water (they say it is helthy for your body) so we only had a short swim before we moved on.

A small beach inside the cave.

Then we arrived Zakynthos town (or Zante) early afternoon. We moored first at the city quay even if the sign said it was for boats over 20 meters. Right after us a swedish boat came in and we helped them with the ropes. Ingela and Lars from Baravara became over buddyboat for over a week after this meeting.

We asked them if they wanted to join us for a small hike and they did!

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We walked up to the castle which was closed for the day, and we had a nice view on the way

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This is the view from a restaurant, we asked to go inside to take photos.

Ingela, Lars and Laila

This should be my house!!

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We went to Stranis Hill

In the evening we had a glas of wine in their boat before Astor and me went to a restaurant for dinner.

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The wind should change direction the next day and it was a lot of swell where we stayed so we moved our boats to the north side where all the other sailboat was moored.

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Me and Astor had a walk to Jysk to buy some stuff, it was a nice walk

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Next morning we left Zakynthos town and continue our sail to the mainland, Peleponnes.

Katakolon/Olympia

We had the wind behind us, so it took us 3 hours to sail to Katakolon.

Katakolon was a nice place to stay as it is a place for cruiseship. That means it is not bars and restaurants for the locals and very quiet in the evening. I mean, we could go out and eat on a restaurant but it was not many locals there. The shopping street closed when the cruiseships left.