Blue Caves and Shipwreck Beaches

A big day on Zante island! (Zante is the Italian name for Zakynthos Island). We started by going swim suit shopping for Matt since he conveniently left his in Egypt. I told him that was clever and I should've thought of that...

Then we drove an hour north along the eastern coast of the island until we got to the very tip. From there we got on a boat which took us to the Blue Caves! It's pretty much exactly as it sounds. I'm not exactly sure of the science of it but it seems the sunlight reflects from the blue water onto the white cave walls and so everything look blue. It's gorgeous! You can only get there by boat and on the way we passed some really pretty rock formations including the double arches. There are tons of boats and people who advertise taking to the blue caves but we choose to go with the one that was at the very tip of the island and thus closer to the caves. They are called Potamitis Trips. They also had a small boat which was key to actually going inside the caves (the bigger boats that leaves from Zakynthos Town can't go inside) and it had a glass bottom. The water was remarkably clear so we could actually see quite a bit below us as well.

Then we also went to Shipwreck (aka Navagio) Beach with the same company but on a bigger boat. It was about a 20min boat ride there and back but well worth it. It's called Shipwreck Beach because there is a large boat which remains there after it wrecked there in 1980. It's a stunning beach and only accessible via boat because it's surrounded by high cliffs. The beach is made of small white pebbles and the water is the most gorgeous blue. We were able to stay there for an hour and we enjoyed our packed picnic lunches on the beach. Then we crawled around in the ship and took tons of pictures.

After our boat ride back we decided to drive over to the viewpoint over shipwreck beach. After parking our car it was a 10-15 minute hike on some sharp rocks but the view was absolutely worth it. We were on top of one of the huge cliffs on the side of the beach looking down on it and I honestly can't imagine a more picturesque view.

We took our time driving back home and admired the beautiful scenery along the way. There are olive trees everywhere and occasionally these cute little towns with cobblestone streets. Every so often there's a vendor alongside the road selling fresh olive oil, honey, wine, and fresh fruits. We stopped and sampled some and ended up buying some candied nuts. We also stopped at another one and bought some of the biggest, juiciest grapes I've ever eaten in my life. They are delicious!

We made another stop at Porto Limnionas which was a cool area where you could jump into the water from the rock side. We didn't jump in since it was later in the evening but we did rest there for a bit and I took a quick nap on the cliff side overlooking the water.

We made it home and changed clothes and went for a nice Italian dinner that was recommended to us. We're so close to Italy here that there's lots of Italian places- heaven for me. It was delicious!

Tomorrow I'm going to try to go scuba diving!