Gaios Paxos – Coming back to a Favourite Place

Yelena, Marina and Jess...the night before leaving Corfu. 

We left Corfu town fairly early and headed to Paxos – only about 15 miles away. We decided to have lunch in Lakka, a bay on the northern half of Paxos and then meet up with the Tomskii Kastan crew in the city of Gaios.
Last time we were at Lakka it gave us some great memories – I think it’s still Ross’ facebook picture leaping off the boat. This is also where we watched the hopelessly drunk and inept German fellow try to drive his buddies in a dinghy to the quay … what a laugh. When we were here in 2010 it was in the month of September – August is a little busier. Coming into Lakka there were so many boats so we found a small space, dropped our hook and settled down to some swimming and lunch. When Jess and I were diving under the boat we noticed that we  were directly over an anchor chain of a big powerboat who put out more than 100 meters of chain in 3 meters of water before tying his stern to a rock. I think the entire marina could have swung safely off that amount of chain in a hurricane.

At around 2pm we picked up anchor and headed towards Gaios – the metropolis of Paxos. It’s built around an island and you drive down a channel towards the city and anchor stern-to-the-mole using classic Med-mooring techniques of throwing your anchor and tying your stern to the quay. 

Tara, tucked in. 

We arrived either 10 minutes too early or 10 minutes too late. Had we been 10 minutes earlier the two boats that took the remaining spots would have been behind us (one was a 40’ powerboat that went by us at 10 knots in the entrance was one of them – not exactly fair or particularly responsible behaviour). 

Doing nails is a favourite pastime...it's become
more like art.

Anyway a very nice Frenchman beside Tomskii pulled his boat over and made a hole for us. Initially we tied up to Tomskii but we decided throwing our own anchor out made sense so we sent Ross in the dinghy and he did a fantastic job this time.

Can you see tha Gaios geese?

Gaios is full of shops, Tavernas, bars, and we availed ourselves of all of them. When putting the dinghy in we saw a turd floating by – barbarians! That nixed swimming, though I don’t think I’d ever swim there unless I had wrapped a rope in our prop or had dropped the only set of keys we have for the boat in the drink.



Ross heading out to check out the swimming area.



For our swimming fix we went out of the harbour entrance by some rocky outcrops and dropped the dinghy anchor and went swimming. Water temperature a balmy 27.8 degrees or so it said, though it was not as warm a few meters underwater. The cooler water is actually welcome as we try to escape the heat.


Matt paying the port fees...21 Euro, not bad.

 For dinner Jess made her patented Spaghetti Bolognese and a beautiful Caprese salad that we devoured and talked until about midnight watching the traffic on the street stroll by … and then packed it in.

Sounds like a holiday.

Heading out of Gaios.