Antipaxos

Antipaxos is the smallest of the Ionian Islands, a low, vine-covered scrap of land roughly 3 kilometres south of Paxos and covering about 5 square kilometres. Administratively it belongs to the municipality of Paxoi in the Corfu regional unit, and the 2021 census counted only 21 permanent residents. There is no village, no road network worth the name and nothing resembling a resort. What the island has instead is limestone cliffs, a scattering of vineyards and three beaches that draw day-boats from Paxos, Corfu and Parga right through the summer.

A Vineyard Island

Almost the whole interior of Antipaxos is given over to vines, worked in small plots by families who mostly live on Paxos and cross over to tend them. The wine they make is a dark, strong red, well known on Paxos itself and produced in small quantities rather than bottled commercially at any scale, which is why tasting it usually means stopping at one of the island's seasonal tavernas. Between the vineyards there are olives, fruit trees and wild herbs, and the vegetation runs right up to the tops of the cliffs, giving welcome shade in high summer.

Local legend gives the vines a divine origin, crediting Dionysus with planting the first of them here, and a related Ionian tale has Poseidon striking Corfu with his trident to break off the Paxos group. Neither story has any archaeological backing, but both are still repeated by boatmen on the crossing, and they say something about how long these islands have been associated with wine.

The recorded history is thin. The island is said to have been settled by Souliotes, the mountain community famous for its resistance to Ali Pasha, who left after their defeat in 1803 and dispersed to Corfu and elsewhere. Antipaxos has never regained a permanent settlement since, and the handful of cottages scattered across it are used seasonally rather than lived in year-round.

Beaches and Coastline

The three named beaches all lie towards the northern end of the island. Vrika is the best known, a short crescent of pale sand shelving into shallow turquoise water with a couple of tavernas behind it. Voutoumi, a little further south, is pebbled, set inside a cove between tall rocks and backed by a steep path up to a taverna on the hill; a footpath over the ridge links the two. Mesovrika, between them, is smaller and quieter, also pebbled, and generally the least busy of the three.

Further south the coast turns steeper and more broken, with small secluded coves, sea caves and clear deep water that make good ground for snorkelling. Those southern inlets are reachable only by boat, which keeps them empty even when the northern beaches are crowded with day-trippers around midday. The whole island is limestone, part of the same formation as Paxos, and the pale rock is what gives the shallows their unusually bright colour.

Getting There and Anchoring

The island's only harbour is Agrapidia on the north-west coast, a small quay rather than a marina, and it is normally occupied by excursion boats. Sea taxis run from Gaios, the main port of Paxos, roughly hourly in season, with a crossing of about fifteen minutes. There is no ferry link to the mainland and no accommodation on the island, so almost everyone who arrives leaves again by evening.

That absence of facilities is exactly what makes the anchorages appealing to yachts, and it is a large part of why Antipaxos is a popular stop for gulet charter guests exploring Greece, whose crews can drop anchor off Vrika or Voutoumi in the morning before the day-boats arrive, swim in water that is clear to the seabed, and move on to Paxos or the Corfu channel by nightfall.