[ Sept.2017 ] After the Blue Caves in Zakynthos in Greece, our tour headed for the famous Shipwreck Beach.
Geographically, the Blue Caves are at the north end of the island and the Shipwreck Beach is on the north west side of it.
On the way there, we went through a village where people were selling hand woven goods on the road which was attractive, though we could not stop there.
I think the name of the village was Volimes.
By the way, you can reach the Shipwreck Beach only from the sea.
Our tour did not go to the beach itself, but the point was to see it from above.
The car park was very crowded as this was the top tourist spot on the island.
Our guide, Katerina said “It is like this at the end of September. Imagine how it was in July and August”.
There were two places that you can see the beach from, one is the man made platform and the other is the natural cliff.
Because there was a queue to get to the platform, we decided to go to the cliff.
Before seeing the beach, I could see the sea and I gasped because of its colour.
I do not think I have ever seen anything bluer than this.
We often compare the colour of the sea to gemstones like emerald green or turquoise blue, but this one was neither of them.
Perhaps the nearest one would be blue agate, maybe.
I remember seeing another surprising colour of the sea which was in Varadero in Cuba in the past, but that one was like the blue of fluorescence.
This one was a much stronger blue.
We went to the edge of the cliff whose height is about 250 metres and stretched my neck to see the beach.
It is worth looking at.
I was fighting against myself because of my tendency for acrophobia.
There were many people on the beach where the wreck was stranded and there were many boats floating on the water, which brought those tourists there.
The original name of this beach is Navagio, but it is famous as Shipwreck Beach because on the stormy day in October 1980, the cigarette smuggling ship “Panayiotis” was shipwrecked and 
stranded and it has been left on this beach since then.
According to our guidebook, a photographer called Stavros Marmatakis stayed in a house near here and found many boxes of cigarettes in their store room.
The owner of the house explained that she took them from the shipwreck.
Marmatakis became interested and asked her to take him there and he took some photos of the beach.
The photos were a great hit as a postcard and that is why this beach became world famous.
On top of that, it is famous among the fans of Japanese animations because this place is used in the cartoon called Porco Rosso by Hayao Miyazaki as the main character’s hiding place.
I have not seen this cartoon, but now I am interested.
When we walked a bit on the cliff, Katerina pointed down to a small empty beach and said “I think that is the ultimate private beach”.
It looked very beautiful and it would be really nice if we could have had it all to ourselves.
