GREEK ODYSSEY

On Zakynthos, balance adventure with restorative days savouring the Ionian isle’s mythical beauty.

- Helena Lee

My five-year-old daughter is lying in the crook of my arm as we relax on a terrace overlooking the Ionian Sea, teased by a light breeze that tempers the heat. It seems apt that I am reading her the opening of Roger Lancelyn Green’s Tales of the Greek Heroes: Stories of Immortals who wander amid the towering heights of great mountains, like those that rise behind us. Mid-sentence, Darcy turns to me and asks: “Is Pan the shepherd still there?”, and it really feels as though it might be.

After all, we are on the island of Zakynthos, where the natural landscape—ancient olive groves and saturated skies—seems touched by the otherworldly (in The Odyssey, Homer calls it ‘wooded Zakynthos’). Today, the south coast is lined with late-night bars and tourist traps, but our villa is near the north-east, where the rhythms of the day are shaped by nature, from the birdsong that greets our ears as we wake to the rising moon that shines yellow each night.