ZAKINTHOS 

Zakynthos is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea and a well-known summer resort. The harbor city of Zakynthos is the capital and major hub, centered around waterfront Solomos Square. Popular beaches like Agios Nikolaos, Alykanas and Tsilivi offer swimming and water sports. Accessed by boat, Navagio beach is the site of a famed 1980 shipwreck resting in a sandy cove framed by cliffs.

Zante

Zakynthos Island  (Zante)

You’ve probably seen the photo below hundreds of times; Navagio beach on the island of Zante is one of the most photographed in Greece. The wreckage found here was a smuggler ship which lost power and washed up on this beautiful bay back in 1981. Other picture-perfect beaches to visit are Gerakas, a large nesting site for loggerhead turtles, and Tsilivi, great for families with a range of watersports on offer.

The mild, Mediterranean climate and the plentiful winter rainfall endow the island with dense vegetation. The principal agricultural products are olive oil, currants, grapes and citrus fruit. The Zante currant is a small sweet seedless grape which is native to the island. The Bay of Laganas is the site of the first National Marine Park and the prime nesting area for loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) in the Mediterranean. In the early 1980s, the Bay of Laganas was seriously threatened as a nesting habitat, but thanks to the efforts of MEDASSET founder and president Lily Venizelos it could be preserved. Caretta caretta is an endangered species – especially by the deck chairs laid out on their breeding grounds and the inevitable pollution. Every year at the beginning of June, the female turtles come to the southern beaches in order to bury their eggs in the sand.

The incubation period for the nest is approximately fifty-five days, after which time hatchlings emerge from the nest and make their way to the sea. Their survival rate is very small, it is estimated that only one in one thousand hatchlings that enter the sea lives to adulthood. Each nest contains around one hundred to one hundred and twenty eggs, each of which are around the size and shape of a ping-pong ball. Female turtles begin to lay eggs at around twenty to thirty years of age.