AN ODYSSEY around the Greek Islands during a pandemic was never going to be a breeze, but the lush Ionian archipelago seemed like the ideal antidote to months of cabin fever in a cluttered Athens apartment. I reckoned that if Odysseus could pull it off in a man-powered galley, fending off sirens, six-headed monsters, and a one-eyed giant, I could handle the slings and arrows of unpredictable travel requirements and capricious ferry schedules.
So I set a course for Paxos, a green speck just off the southern tip of Corfu, and intended to journey slowly south, alighting on the smallest, sleepiest Ionian islands, until I reached Odysseus’s homeland of Ithaca. I didn’t have a dozen ships and 600 men, but I did have a straw hat and a weather app.
Things did not get off to an auspicious start. The 90-minute crossing from Corfu to Paxos on a stuffy hydrofoil was not quite the pleasure trip that the ferry company, Joy Cruises, had promised. Coming out of the terminal with my travel companion, the Swedish photographer Loulou d’Aki, I perked up when I saw our rental car: a convertible Suzuki Jimny that looked game for adventure. But no sooner had we roared out of the pint-size port of Gaios than an ominous cloud of steam hissed from the hood, and the car wheezed to a halt.
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