Yes, I know, it was off-limits, you are not allowed to sail through the Grand Canal with your tender as a non-resident..... But hey, we are Dutch, to us 'no' means maybe there is a possibility. And we only have this one chance now that we are here with our sailboat and tender. So we just did it. And it was great, also a bit tricky through the narrow canals with a lot of waves and 10,000 other boats, check out our video of the trip in the small canals. There you can see very well that Venice is composed of 118 small islands connected by 400 bridges. We enjoyed how you could almost touch the houses and saw everyone in the city doing their thing (loading fruit into the boat, transporting guests).

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When we sailed the island of Lefkas in the Ionic Sea of Greece, on the most southeastern side of the island, is an islet called Atokos. This is an uninhabited island, where on the east coast is the famous Wild Pig Beach. We took our dinghy and looked at the pigs that walked on the beach here. The pigs are wild or semi-wild pigs, probably descendants of animals that were once left on the island by humans. This happens more often on uninhabited islands, where pigs are introduced for food purposes or accidentally stranded by ship voyages. Atokos has been uninhabited for a long time, but in the past it was occasionally visited by shepherds or hunters. The pigs may have come from these. They eat a wide range of plants, seeds, roots and nuts that occur in nature. On Atokos vegetation is sparse, but pigs can eat dried grass and branches. Marine life can also be a source of food; some pigs eat washed-up seaweed or small crustaceans. Although pigs are technically wild, they often exhibit semi-tame behaviors when they come into contact with people. Their behavior depends on how much interaction they have had with visitors. They can tolerate human contact, but often remain wary. Some pigs are curious and dare to approach, especially if they smell food!

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We anchored in the bay of Laganas and while we were anchoring, we suddenly heard a puff coming from the water. It turned out to be a sea turtle that swam at the back of the ship and came up for a moment. We were surprised, because we knew that this bay was famous for sea turtles, but we did not expect to see one right away. And it was impressive, because the sea turtle was at least 1 meter long and weighed 80kg, which means that she is certainly more than 50 years old. The sea turtles have become the symbol of Zakynthos, they are called Caretta caretta and can grow up to 1.20 meters and weigh 100 kg. They mainly eat jellyfish, shellfish and seaweed. The breeding season runs from May to August. Females come ashore at night to lay their eggs in holes, after which they cover them with sand. A nest can contain up to 100 eggs. After about 60 days the young turtles hatch. They navigate to the sea by following the moonlight. The caretta caretta is very threatened by pollution, fishing and tourism. We spent 3 days in the bay, saw a sea turtle behind our boat a few times every day, but often 8 tourist boats immediately came to see the turtle very close as it tried to swim to the beach.

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