Zakynthos map: where everything is on Zante

The island

Zakynthos or Zante, and the two coasts behind the name

Both names belong to the same island. Zakynthos is the Greek one, on the road signs and the ferry timetables. Zante is the Italian form the Venetians left behind, and it is what most British and Irish operators still print on a booking. You will see the two alternate inside a single brochure, which is confusing the first time and harmless after that.

The split that actually matters is geographic. Everything east of the Vrachionas ridge is low, farmed and edged with sand: Tsilivi, Alykes, Argassi, Laganas, the currant plain around the airport. It holds the hotels because it is the only part of the island where hotels are possible. West of the ridge the land stops in a wall three hundred metres above the sea, from the northern tip almost to Keri, broken by a handful of coves that you reach in a boat or not at all.

The wall

That is why the booking goes wrong so often. Somebody sees the wreck on the sand between two white cliffs, books a week in Laganas because it is cheap and close to the airport, and finds out on arrival that the cove in the photograph is 44 km away and only reachable by sea. Neither fact appears on a hotel listing.

The same one-sided pattern turns up further north in the chain, though the geography is gentler about it. Corfu also puts its resorts on one coast and its cliffs on the other, but it has roads over the top and a town worth a day in its own right, so the layout up there is worth comparing if you are choosing between the two islands rather than visiting both. Kefalonia sits directly between them, close enough that a fair number of people fly into it and finish the trip here, and landing at EFL instead is often the cheaper half of a two-island week, with the ferry from Pesada down to Agios Nikolaos closing the gap in about ninety minutes.

Where the resorts are, and who each one suits

The resorts sit in a rough arc from Alykes in the north-east, past the town, round to Laganas Bay and out along the Vasilikos peninsula. They are close together by Greek island standards, and the gap between Laganas and anywhere else is far wider than the eight kilometres suggest.

How long everything takes

These are driving times outside July and August. In high season add a third on the town ring road, and more on the north-west route to the Navagio viewpoint, where the last stretch is single track and the coaches turn round at the top.

Navagio and the Blue Caves: what the map cannot tell you

Navagio is a cove on the north-west coast with a rusting coaster, the Panagiotis, sitting on the sand where it was driven ashore in 1980. There is no path down and there never has been. Boats run from Porto Vromi, twenty minutes away, from Cape Skinari at the northern tip and from Agios Nikolaos, plus longer day trips out of Zakynthos Town and Laganas. The cliff above the sand has been dropping rock, and landings have been suspended more than once since 2018.

The viewpoint above the cove is a completely separate journey. It is an hour by road from the town, through Anafonitria, and the platform hangs over the drop with the beach a long way below. Sections of that clifftop have been fenced off after landslides, so the arrangement changes from one season to the next. Treat the viewpoint and the beach as two different outings rather than two views of the same one.

The Blue Caves are 12 km further north, arches and hollows in the same limestone where the water throws blue light back onto the rock. Small boats go in from Agios Nikolaos and Cape Skinari, and the light is best before eleven. Most operators sell the caves and the wreck as one trip.

Where the caves are

Laganas Bay is a national marine park

The whole southern bay, from the Keri cliffs round to Gerakas, is the National Marine Park of Zakynthos, and it exists for one reason: these beaches carry the densest loggerhead turtle nesting anywhere in the Mediterranean. Sekania, a small strand you cannot land on, takes the largest share of nests. Dafni, Gerakas, Kalamaki and the eastern end of Laganas take the rest.

The practical consequences show up on your holiday. Nesting beaches close between sunset and sunrise from late May to the end of October, umbrellas are restricted to marked strips or banned above the high water line, and lights facing the sand are not allowed because hatchlings navigate by the horizon. On the water there are speed limits, anchoring bans and a no-go zone off Sekania, which is why turtle-spotting boats out of Limni Keriou and Laganas run to a fixed route rather than wherever they like.

The rules are posted in English at every beach entrance, and a room on Laganas beach is a room inside a protected area. If seeing a turtle is part of the trip, Limni Keriou and the Vasilikos side put you closest to it.

Getting around: bus or car

One KTEL network covers the island and every line starts from the terminal in Zakynthos Town. Laganas, Tsilivi, Argassi, Kalamaki and Alykes get a decent service in July and August, several buses a day and a late one on the Laganas route. Everywhere else thins out to one or two departures and nothing on Sunday, and there is no airport bus at all, so the transfer is a taxi or a pre-booked minibus whatever your budget.

The bus will not take you to the north-west. Volimes, Anafonitria, the Navagio viewpoint, Porto Vromi and Cape Skinari are car territory, and so is the Vasilikos road after mid afternoon. If your week is Tsilivi or Laganas plus two boat trips, skip the car entirely. If the west coast, the mountain villages or Gerakas are on your list, hire for those days and hand it back, rather than paying for a week of it sitting outside the hotel.