[Sept. 2023] While staying in Nafplio on the Peloponnese Peninsula in Greece, another place I wanted to visit was the Corinth Canal.
It’s a canal that locates between the Greek mainland and the Peloponnese Peninsula, and while we were travelling by bus from Athens to Nafplio, I caught a glimpse of it from the window and was very attracted to it.
You can go there by bus, but we wanted to take a boat that goes through the canal, so we asked a travel agency in Nafplio to make arrangements.
A taxi to the Corinth Canal and back costs €110, and a boat ride costs €28 per person.
On this holiday, the expenses for these excursions were high.
We met up at 3pm with the driver and arrived at the location in about an hour.
Unfortunately, it was cloudy that day.
The colour of the water was dull and the impact of the canal was halved.
I was hoping to see the bright blue colour of the sea at the bottom of the steep cliff.
It is said that the idea of building a canal in this area dates back to the ancient Greek era, and was put into practice during the Roman era, but was discontinued.
In the end, inspired by the completion of the Suez Canal, construction began and was completed in 1893.
The total length of the canal is apparently 6343 metres.
Our boarding time was 5 o’clock, so we wandered around the bridge for about an hour.
When I happened to look, I saw some brave people doing bungee jumping here.
This was the second time I’ve seen bungee jumping.
The first was in Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan.
I’d like to try paragliding or parachuting if I had the chance, but I don’t want to do bungee jumping.
I wonder how they feel before and during the jump and afterwards.
Well, when we went to the mouth of the canal early, a boat was already anchored there.
We boarded with group tour people.
It’s true that the canal is more interesting to ride on a boat than to just look at it from above, as you can see the cliffs approaching.
The cliff part wasn’t as long as I expected, though.
Proceeding from the Aegean Sea side, we came out to the Corinthiakos Bay, turned around and came back along the canal.
Everyone on the boat was busy taking photos and videos.
Some people even went into the captain’s cabin to take pictures.
Nowadays, the Corinth Canal is mainly used for navigation by tourist boats.
It was the same with Meteora, but when you see something you’ve always wanted to see, you feel a sense of accomplishment as well as something similar to despondency, feeling “Oh, I have seen it now!”.
