RIB Boat - Wednesday, October 1
Chris and Casey had both wanted to visit the island currently named Ithaca, but the ferry schedule seemed to make that impossible. We’d abandoned this idea the night we arrived.
However! When we were exploring the docks on Monday, one of the tour boats advertised an itinerary that included both the Pig Island that our young people wanted to visit AND a stop in Ithaca! It seemed that a visit to Ithaca could be arranged after all!
But when we suggested this plan to villa manager Helen, she was appalled and went to great lengths to dissuade us from joining one of those “cattle boats.” Her company could serve us much better.
And that is how we came to charter a RIB boat for the day.
A RIB boat is a rigid inflatable boat. It’s basically a motorboat with a lightweight rigid hull lined on either side with large inflatable tubes. This makes the boat both super light and very stable. It’s also easy to climb in and out because you can just sit on the inflated tubes and scooch your legs around.
We parked our cars at the marina office and met our skipper, Spyros. Then we boarded and were off!
We arrived at Papanikolos Cave well before the tourist boats, and this time we could sail inside.
Spyros managed to work in most of the Odyssey’s plot elements in the day’s tour. This was interesting because I’ve always thought much of the Odyssey took place further afield in the Mediterranean, at least as far away as Sicily. But to hear the locals tell it, Odysseus spent ten years sailing around about 20 square miles of sea, right next to his house.
Spyros might be of the opinion that modern Ithaca was Homer’s Ithaca, a view we have all come to dispute.
Done with local sightseeing, we set forth for the half-hour journey across open water to the island that today goes by the name Ithaca. The sailboats were coming out in force; on a pretty day, this protected bay is full of sails scudding back and forth.
Ithaca has several towns. Spyros told us that Phrikes, the closest to Lefkada, has nothing so we didn’t stop there. Phrikes is, however, the main ferry stop from Lefkada; this is why we couldn’t just take a public ferry from Lefkada to Ithaca. Most ferries to Ithaca stop in Pisaetos on the southwest coast, which serves travel from Kefalonia and several mainland ports, including Patras.
Vathos sailed us past the spot where Odysseus allegedly hid his wealth in a cave on the mountainside. This is near the capital town Vathy.
In Vathy, the group separated. Ryan and Casey and kids went off to visit the archaeological museum. Ryan reported that the museum was under renovation so all they could visit was one room with some geometric vase fragments proving that Odysseus was king.
Chris and I walked down the harbor with the drone following us. We also sought out a café where we could purchase drinks that would justify our using their toilet. There are no facilities on a RIB boat!
We’d considered eating lunch on Ithaca, but Spyros advised crossing back toward Nydri earlier rather than later - the water gets rougher as the day progresses. That way we could eat on Kalamos later in the afternoon after a stop at the pig island.
So is Ithaca Odysseus’s geniune homeland? Seems unlikely. It would be quite a sea voyage to get there, which would impede visitors just popping by and the King from keeping cattle on the mainland. Team Dörpfeld!!!!
From Ithaca, we sailed back across the expanse of water to Atakos, the pig island. Atakos is a private island, uninhabited by humans. Its only permanent residents are a colony of feral pigs. No one knows how the pigs got there. (Capt Geraminos of the Odysseia suggested that they were descendants of the men Circe turned into swine.) They’re feral, which means they’re descendants of domesticated pigs. Some are reportedly reverting to a true wild state, growing tusks, but they’re also very friendly to humans. You can even pet them.
On our visit, only one mama pig came to see us. She enjoyed the salad that someone had strewn on the beach, but she liked Henry’s Pringles a lot more. True to reports, she swam in the sea and even came into the water to pee next to two Italian snorkelers. Her four piglets made a brief appearance but then ran off to hide in the woods. She was lying down to nurse them as we pulled away from the shore.
Spyros had planned all along for us to eat on Kalamos; these guides always have arrangements with friends set up, so our eating lunch on Ithaca would’ve messed that up. No complaints, though; we had the most wonderful lunch at Taverna Varka in Episkopi, which is just a little harbor on the north shore with no town to speak of.
And then it was time to head back. It was a magical day!
That night, Chris grilled hamburgers for a late dinner. NB: Greek hamburgers are terrible; they have a lot of breading in them, so they don’t behave well on the grill, and the stores don’t seem to sell just regular ground beef. But it was fun to have a family dinner with everyone participating in the conversation.