In late June of 2005 two of my friends, Giacomo from Rome and Lisa from here in Newport Beach joined me for a week's tour of the Ionian Islands off the west coast of Greece. Our home for seven days and seven nights was the Elentari, Queen Of The Stars, a fifty foot sailboat owned and skippered by Tristram Miller of Laguna Beach, California.
Elentari was built here in Southern California entirely by hand from teak and mahogany by Tristram's father Robert Miller. They sailed her to the Greek Islands shortly after she was built in the mid-eighties and she's made her home there ever since. When Robert Miller died in the mid-nineties Tristram inherited Elentari and continued his father's legacy of taking a few lucky people every year for personalized tours of the Ionian Islands.
A surfer who's been sailing since he was 2 years old, Tristram's home away from Laguna Beach is, not surprisingly, half a world away in the waters of the Ionian Islands. Tristram's easy going, laid back style made the trip a great adventure that was blissfully free of too much structure and too many rules.
He took us places conventional tours never get to, introduced us to interesting people along the way and knew all of the most amazing waters to swim in and the best tavernas to eat at. It's hard to imagine a more perfect tour of the islands than the one Tristram gave us.
To see everything there is to see in the Ionians in a week would be impossible - so it helped to have someone who knows the islands as intimately as Tristram does and could give us so much in so short a time and have it be so much fun all the while.
Our trip began on Paxos, a small island just south of Corfu. It was here in the port town of Gaios , pictured above and below, where Tristram and his first mate Paolo met the three of us as we got off the ferry from Corfu. Somehow I was expecting a lengthy orientation lecture when we first boarded the boat. Instead, Tristram said, "Oh yeh, I probably ought to show you how to flush the toilet." And that was pretty much it except for a word of caution about not getting suntan lotion on the beautifully finished teak deck.
The Ionian Islands lie to the west of mainland Greece beginning with Corfu at the top and continuing roughly southeast through Paxos, Antipaxos, Lefkada, Meganisi, Ithaca, Keffalonia and Zakynthos. The Ionians lie directly along a major fault line, resulting in earthquakes that have had a big influence in shaping both the topography of the islands and the history of the people living on them.
Setting sail from Paxos we headed for the tiny island of Antipaxos that lies just to the south. Here in the bay where we dropped anchor the water is so brilliantly blue that when gulls fly overhead they also appear to be bright blue. Antipaxos has less than a hundred inhabitants and is densely covered in olive trees and grape orchards.
A hike to the top of one of the hills along a winding stone path capped off our afternoon of swimming and snorkeling and afforded us a spectacular view of the bay, the Ionian Sea and a trace of mainland Greece out on the horizon.
Sipping on cold beer and wine at a small taverna under the shade of a grape covered arbor and marveling at the view, Lisa and I kept looking at each other and grinning: "We're here, we're really here. We're in the Greek Islands!"
Late in the afternoon we sailed back up to Paxos and the small town of Loggos, pictured below, where we moored for the night and had our first Greek dinner in a local taverna; eating alfresco under a thatched canopy and getting our first taste of the local wine. The aroma of grilling meat and fish, the dirt floor of the dimly lit taverna's patio, the wooden tables and chairs and the feral cats scrounging for scraps beneath our feet made it clear we'd stepped into a totally different world than the one we'd left back home.
Giacomo found the wine to be lacking - spoiled of course by even the simplest of table wines in Italy. But me? No problem. It was wine, this was Greece and I was ready to dive in head first, enjoy every sight, sound, smell and taste and love every second of it all.
Before dinner that first evening we hiked up a long winding path shrouded with olive trees to the top of a hill overlooking Loggos and the breathtakingly beautiful horseshoe bay it's nestled into. Here, perched atop the ruins of an old lighthouse the five of us watched the sunset over the tip of the island, had some good laughs and took lots of pictures.
Our first day in the islands was a long one, filled to overflowing with so many extraordinary sights and sensations that by the time I finally laid my head down to go to sleep back on the Elentari it took all of about a minute for the gentle rocking of the boat to put me into a very deep sleep - the best I'd had in weeks, maybe even months or years.
For the next week the gentle rocking and side to side swaying of the boat put me into a trance, cradling me as it were in its movement and allowing me to drift off into the most restful of sleeps whenever I'd close my eyes. I couldn't help myself - I took a lot of naps and they were as wonderful a part of the trip as anything else. What I wouldn't give to get my bed here at home to rock like that at night...
