Short trip report to Greece – May 2025
Since we had this year a long weekend of 4 full days available in May 2025 and now direct flights from where we live to Athens, my wife and decided to pay a visit to the Lichadonissia islands in Greece where several people and trip reports mentioned that seeing Mediterranean monk seals there were high. Going to the islands for seal observation is not that easy with our own means so considering past reports, we directly contacted Dimitris Vassatis from Posidon in Kamena Vourla and luckily, he was available on our dates. He charged us 250€ per day for 3h-long private boat tour (+ 50€ per extra hour spent on site if we wanted to). Kamena Vourla being the main town near the islands about 15min away by speedboat, this meant 2h30 around the islands to look for the monk seals for each tour. We booked 2 tours with him. Dimitris organizes boat tours to the islands almost every day all year long and thus knows very well the places where to look for the seals. May is also a period that is not too crowded with tourists, which also helps for the seal sightings according to him. We booked a rental car at Athens airport and then drove directly to Kamena Vourla where we booked 3 nights at the Hotel Sissy nicely located in the sea front and in walking distance to the marina and restaurant area. The drive from the airport to Kamena Vourla is only about 2 hours so upon arrival on the first day we had some time to drive around the area and go to the Mount Iti National Park that was said to be rich in wildlife. We indeed saw many interesting birds but for mammals, we only came across one red fox. On the following days, we were unlucky with the weather that turned very bad with heavy rain, wind and cold temperature. Unbelievable for May and Dimitris actually told us it was probably the worst weather they had since the beginning of the year. Damned! Anyway, the sea wasn’t too bad so we could leave the marina and cruise to the islands with Dimitri’s speedboat. On the first tour and after waiting for about 30min in one of the two spots where he sees the seals often, we saw one monk seal very well wandering around the boat for about 10min. Very nice sighting indeed and good enough for pictures but without any sunlight (see photos above). On the following day, the sea was choppier, and we saw nothing during the 3h spent roaming around the islands. We asked Dimitris whether we could try again on our last day, which he accepted, but our flight back to France got cancelled and we had to rebook to another route at the last minute, which killed the day and prevented us from a last try!! Bottom line: between the bad weather and the flight cancelation, this long weekend turned out to be quite miserable, but we managed however to see a monk seal, our main target. Thank God! In addition, we also observed one evening while taking a drink at a restaurant a pod of bottlenose dolphins cruising near the small bay of Kamena Vourla.
Samuel
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