There is a place in western Greece where, in a single day, you can frolic at an all-inclusive resort at breakfast time and then, after lunch, wade through an entrance to the underworld. This is Parga, built over a double-curve bay where the beaches are studded with tasteful tourist attractions, and inland the Acherontas River (the “river of woe”) weaves through the rocks.
It’s a good way to plan a family holiday, I think: glamour, sunburn, feta, little bit of death, beer, swim. I decided not to tell the children about the death.
At Parga Beach Resort, guests stay in airy little bungalows scattered around the seven swimming pools and gather whenever they’re hungry at a sprawling bar that sits on the Valtos beach. Across the bay, an 11th-century Venetian castle sits on the edge of a mountain. If you venture up there, you find a fortress, where flowers grow through ramparts that were once bristling with cannons. Behind the beach, ancient olive trees line the paths.
At “Greek night” at the hotel, the staff invite children to dance in circles beside a spotlit pool and smash plates (“Can I? Seriously?”) But really, every night is Greek night and thus, lovely. We drink, and we eat, and we say “Efcharistó”, constantly. We smash things, too, but by accident, and nobody claps. During the day, we clamber over the hot white sand into the sea, and there are massages and kids’ movie nights – guests are encouraged, staff tell us discreetly, to “disconnect to reconnect”, by which they mean avoid our little screens for the duration of our stay. “OK!” we say. We’ll do what we’re told in this heat and this beauty. Plus, we’re busy, we’re busy in our own slothful, bloated way. We’re closer to Albania here than Athens if we fancy a day trip and there are quick boats to Corfu, Paxos and Antipaxos, and taxis into the old town, where the colourful houses are arranged up the hillside, or else the ancient amphitheatre at Dodoni is an hour inland – pilgrims used to travel there to hear the voice of Zeus.
One morning we drive up through roads lined with trees swagged with nets to catch the falling olives and arrive at the ancient site of Necromanteion of Acheron. The heat is almost visible – the horizon wobbles drunkenly. The site is at the meeting point of three rivers, the Acheron, Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, believed to flow through the kingdom of Hades. And the meaning of the rivers’ names are exquisitely bleak – “joyless”, “burning coals” and “lament”. Holiday words, I repeat them with glee as if calling my children in from the sea.
These ruins were once where people came to talk to their dead ancestors – in Homer’s Odyssey, the Necromanteion was described as the entrance by which Odysseus made his journey to the underworld. Today it is a grand and dusty series of arches and an underground chamber apparently built to create intense “psycho-acoustic effects” for ancient visitors high on hallucinogens and preparing to meet the dead. The chamber would offer a dim refreshing relief from the heat, were it not for the definite, no-doubt-at-all ghosts. Outside cats prowl for shade, children shiver for ice-cream. We get back in the car, vaguely chilled.
It’s not a long drive down the mountain to the river. The approach is lined with stalls selling rubber shoes and waterproof bags – lessons have been learned here and we invest wisely to avoid broken phones or soles. Here’s how one story of the river goes: the Titans fought the Olympians for control of the universe, gaining strength by drinking deeply from the Acheron. As revenge, Zeus cursed the water, turning it black and bitter, perfect, aesthetically anyway, as a route to the underworld. All blackness has gone now, thankfully, though, honestly, it would have been great for Instagram.
In bikinis and very hideous shoes, we trek gently down through the rocks where locals sell jewellery hanging from the trees, to a gorge where pale blue water hosts silvery fish and adventurous families. It is quite obscenely gorgeous, wading through waterfalls, kayaks passing creakily, the freezing water sometimes knee-high, sometimes nipple. Warmer patches signal fresh springs nearby – we see them in the rocks, too, which loom above us, providing small stages for sunbathing and heating our numbed wet feet. After we’ve dried off, at a taverna in the mountains, we eat homemade feta cheese and a mountain of lamb chops in the shade of olive trees.
Half an hour up the coast we check into Elix, a deeply glamorous hotel built into the cliff, with suites stacked on top of each other all looking out on to Karavostasi beach. We’re further from town here, with the muted efficiency that comes with luxury. A sleek funicular connects the rooms up on the cliff with the beach down there, where guests can borrow paddleboards or dinghies, and the nearby shipwreck-strewn Sivota is a short drive away. For children, the funicular itself is entertainment enough. In the hotel’s amphitheatre, kids’ movies play at dinnertime and in the bar, elegant couples get engaged. It is quite perfect.
On our last evening, we return to the beach at dusk for a barbecue on the sand and watch the sun set extravagantly over the sea – bright pink, gold, then a wild and blazing orange. Despite all mythology suggesting otherwise, in Parga death feels very far away.
Parga Beach Resort (pargabeachresort.gr) has double rooms from £102, all inclusive. Elix has double rooms from £156, all inclusive
