small beach near Syvota in north-western Greece

The area of north-western Greece to the south of Igoumenitsa (Ηγουμενίτσα) provides many secluded beaches and flat rocks for a quiet relaxation au naturel… or rock-diving, if you prefer.


We went from Ioannina, passing through picturesque mountainous landscapes, and camped at a small beach close to Syvota (Σύβοτα). Like at most of the Greek beaches, you won’t see any signs for nudists there and when we arrived there in the late afternoon none was clothes-free. At night, however, when others left and the temperature was still very warm, there was no reason to remain clad. When I went for a night swim, something truly special happened: as I always swim in goggles (the only thing I like to wear while swimming ;-)), I could see that my body left thousands of tiny sparkling traces in the water – it looked like golden ‘stardust’ that fairies leave when they fly around, so I called myself an underwater fay. In Sweden there is an annual competition for water fairies who play different music instruments standing in the river. Then I think in Greece there should be the next stage of the competition: for water fairies dancing in the sea at night! Then spectators will have to submerge as well, but it is not a problem, since in August the average night temperature in Greece is warmer than the average day temperature in Sweden and the sea stays warm… Biological explanation for this phenomenon is that bioluminescent plankton, which is abundant in the Mediterranean in the late summer, responds to mechanical disturbance with glowing.


When we woke up in the morning I already felt confident enough to stay naked but when I got out of the tent I saw that there was a straight couple and the man was also sans clothes. Then we swam to the rocks and jumped from them (see the video above). That man also came there and showed us a better dive. He was a friendly French guy and suggested us to show how to dive. Well, I tried just from less than half of the height of those rocks and wasn’t very successful 😦 Hope I’ll learn to dive from such height next year!

When we returned there was another couple, Greeks, who looked at us; probably they didn’t expect to see naked people there, and I thought it might be uncomfortable for them, but in fact soon they disrobed completely as well. So until a yacht with a big italian family arrived, the beach had become mostly naturist =)

And small pebbles of the beach were also perfect to try out a slingshot which I bought in Ioannina (it is sold there as a souvenir for some reason).

Don’t worry, I wouldn’t use it against this beautiful Scarce Swallowtail but rather to protect from the aggressive textile invaders 😀


2 thoughts on “small beach near Syvota in north-western Greece

  1. hey, good luck with the fuel and everything!if you click on the phrase “a small beach close to Syvota” (green), you will see the location on google maps! but there are many small beaches around, you will see which you like more. let me know about your experience.

    Like

  2. Hi,I have planned vacations in Syvota and should already be there, but I was held back by the strike of fuel trackers that left all gas stations without gas! However, I am still planning to go there a little later, when the strike is over. Could you please describe how we can get to the nude beach you have discovered? perhaps a mark on Google earth exerpt, or other description would help. Thanks in advance.

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s