Day 4 in one of our new favorite Greek Islands – Lefkada: Swimming tour of private beaches

Well, days 1-3 of our time in Lefkada were already so awesome. It was hard to imagine anything we could do on day 4 that would make it better. And well, it happened. We created our own “swimming tour” (instead of a “walking tour) along the west side of Lefkada, to visit three of the most popular beaches, but more importantly, to get to three more beaches that are only accessible by sea. And, as a bonus, we discovered a fun cave to play in and around! Man, Lefkada really showed her magic this day and was fighting hard to become our favorite of the Greek islands!

The coastline swimming tour plan

As much as the four of us all love swimming, we were less interested in just heading out to sea and “seeing what happens”. So, we made a plan. Using a map (yay!). Damian had gone on a stake-out swim the morning before, so he helped us with the intel, and for the rest we just trusted the map! Here is a picture of our plan and some more information on each stop (thanks Google maps for your satellite view!).

The “big” beaches as anchor points

There were three main beaches that we used as our anchor points:

• Kathisma Beach (A): This was our starting point. We drove up to the parking lot on this (long and pebbly) beach and parked on the north end, so we were ready for our swim! One of the beach restaurants was willing to hold our car keys, so that was great.
• Milos Beach (B): This was our main middle stop and is also a really long and pebbly beach, with many areas for naturalists. I was excited to swim to this one because to access it otherwise you have to walk down a steep and long set of stairs from the main town, and, remember, I hate steps!
• Agios Nikitas Beach (C): This was our final stop. It is a little town beach, with boats and families, and the least scenic of all three. But we were excited to end here because the little town meant that there were places to eat and (hopefully) ways to get back to our car at Kathisma beach.

So, was it awesome? Is Lefkada now your favorite of the Greek islands?

In a word, yes. It was exhausting and we had to struggle to get back to our car, but other than that, it was awesome!!

Here’s how we did it.

Kathisma Beach (A) and private beaches (1) and (2)

Note that I don’t have the names (if there are any) for the private beaches, so I will be referring to them by their numbers.

We parked at the Kathisma beach parking lot and we didn’t take much with us – Damian carried two big bottles of water in a knapsack, we had some cash in the zip pocket of Damian’s shorts and then I carried the GoPro with us the whole way. We left our towels and shoes on Kathisma beach, our car key with a beach restaurant and everything else in the car.

And we were off! We got into the water at Kathisma beach, and an added benefit of getting in on the very north end is that there are beautiful rocks and caves there. We had just barely started our tour and things were looking gorgeous as ever.

The swim from Kathisma to private beach 1 took us about 25ish minutes. It isn’t crazy difficult and it isn’t scary at all, because the water is super clear and so you can usually see all the way to the bottom. However, we all did have a good laugh because Damian had claimed that the water was so still that it was “like swimming in a pool” which was definitely an overstatement. There were waves and even some tiny whitecaps (technically, if you go by the definition). We did find some nice rocks to stand and relax on (and take pictures on) along the way!

And then we (finally) got to our first private beach yay! This one was about 150m long and was totally empty. There was a boat off the shore, so it is possible that those folks were there for a while and were just leaving, but it was a very pretty beach with pebbles and a gorgeous rock face backdrop. We took some pretty sweet pictures here!

We chilled for a little bit, but after about 10-15 minutes we were ready for our next swim. We had originally thought that we may stay on each of the beaches longer but we were feeling antsy to see what else was out there, and we only had water on us, so we moved on pretty quick!

There was a second private beach (#2 in the picture) along our way to Milos beach, but Poops, Liz and I were getting a bit tired from the swimming and didn’t feel like swimming onto the shore and back out to sea again. So Damian went to swim into it and hung out there for a few minutes and then met back up with us for the swim to Milos beach.

Milos beach (B), private beach (3) and surprise cave (4)

The swim to Milos beach probably took us about another 25+ minutes and were really tired when we got there. So, we just relaxed at the edge of the water for a bit, keeping our top halves out to stay warm and our lower in the water to stay acclimated. We also chugged more of the water bottles we had brought along (thanks Damian!), because, hydration first.

Milos is a naturist beach, and while I thought it was only so at one end, it is actually a naturist beach the whole way through. On another trip, with just us, Damian and I would have likely visited it but this group of four did not need to see each other in the buff!

We had fun sitting on Milos’ waterline, and when we tried to take pictures we kept getting hit by waves, which I thought was funny, but others enjoyed less. We did get this fun shot out of it though!

We then crab-walked along the end of the beach and set out for private beach #3. These swims got to be a little shorter (phew!) and it was about 15 minutes to swim from Milos to private beach #3. This one has a name (I think it’s called Ammoudoula) and there was a family relaxing on it. We decided to skip swimming to it, especially because we had seen an exciting cave coming up around the bend. And when we got there, this cave (#4 in the map) was the highlight of our journey! There are so many fun things to do in this cave and we could have spent hours there. We sat on the rocks, did jumps and dives off the rocks, and, just played around.

But, my favorite part was that there was a rock hole underneath the water that we could swim through. We had brought goggles with us and each took a turn in this little underwater world. After the picture of me below is a little video of Poops swimming through the cave hole.

We played for a while and then started getting hungry (and our cave was being intruded by other travelers, how rude). So we left the cave and made the easy (thankfully) 15 minutes swim up to Agios Nikitas beach.

We walked up the main street (and with no shoes and no clothes I’m sure we looked like the ideal customers) and sat down to eat at Meating Point. We had some delicious gyros and, as we were paying with wet bills, Damian decided to be a gem and go get the car for us.

Little did we know this would be the hardest part of the whole journey! He walked back most of the way to Kathisma beach barefoot, with his feet on the smoking hot asphalt. He got a ride down the path to the beach (luckily) and then retrieved all the items we had left on the beach, got our keys from the restaurant and came to pick us up. If we were doing this again the only I would change would be to park at Agios Nikitas, then hitch a ride with someone (no taxis in this area) to Kathisma Beach and then do the swim. That way when you end you have everything you need there already!

In summary – our swim tour rocked!

This DIY swimming tour was totally awesome and I would totally do it again! We swam about 1.5km in total (especially when you take into account getting onto and away from the shores) over about two hours (our swimming was very leisurely, mostly breaststroke the whole way), and it was such a new and neat way to see the coastline of Lefkada. The next time we visit the Greek islands, wherever we were go, I am going to try to create another one too. Yay!

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If you want to read more about our time in Lefkada:

• Part 1: Days 1-3 in Porto Katsiki, Agiofili and Vasiliki – click here
• Part 2: Day 4 doing our own swimming tour of private beaches – you are here!
• Part 3: Days 5-6 with a return to Porto Katsiki and exploring Lefkada town – click here