Why to visit Costa Navarino
A sheltered bay in the south-west Peloponnese that has quietly become one of the most considered coastlines in the Mediterranean — without losing its Messinian bones.
The first time I came to Costa Navarino, I arrived in the wrong season and on the wrong road. It was early November, a Tuesday, and I had driven from Kalamata on the inland route — the one the phone app picks when it doesn’t know any better. I was late. The hotel had left a key in an envelope at reception. The bay was already dark. I didn’t see the water until the following morning, when I pulled open the curtains and understood, in the flat, winter light, what everyone had been trying to tell me.
It is a quiet place. That is the first and most accurate thing you can say about this stretch of coast. Costa Navarino is not — as the brochure copy sometimes implies — a resort. It is a piece of the Messinian coastline, forty kilometres long and about four kilometres wide, that happens to have some very well-built hotels in it. The hills behind it run up toward Pylos and the mediaeval castle at Methoni. The bay itself, Navarino Bay, is the one where the Ottoman fleet burned in 1827. Most of what you see from a hotel balcony here has been visible, largely unchanged, since then.
Messinia, slowly
The region is called Messinia, and it is the south-western prefecture of the Peloponnese. It’s the one that sticks out into the Ionian, between the Mani and the Ionian islands. It’s quieter than its neighbours. The Mani has its reputation for stone towers and ruggedness; Laconia has Monemvasia; Arcadia has the mountains and the trail walks. Messinia has, mostly, olive groves. It is one of the three most productive olive regions in Greece — which is to say one of the three most productive olive regions in the world — and the groves give the landscape its particular quality: a kind of silver-green haze that sits low over the hills and makes everything look slightly watercoloured.
This matters, because a lot of what Costa Navarino is — as a place to spend time — comes directly out of that landscape. The food is Messinian. The wine is local. The walks are through olive groves. The beaches are sandy rather than pebbly, because Messinia drains several rivers, and rivers carry sand. The bay at Voidokilia, fifteen minutes up the road from the main resort cluster, is one of the most photographed beaches in the Mediterranean, and one of the few places in the country you can swim in flat water in a genuine Omega shape.
What a week looks like
A week in Costa Navarino, if you’re doing it properly, is not about the resort. The resort is the place you sleep and eat breakfast. The rest of the day, you’re out. This is the thing that most guides get slightly wrong: they describe Costa Navarino as a destination, when actually it’s a base for a specific region. The hotels themselves know this, which is why their concierge desks look less like concierge desks and more like small travel agencies.
Our guides run a half-dozen day trips from here, and the pattern is the same every time. Early start — usually before 8am — to beat the heat and the light traffic. One activity before lunch: a swim, a walk, a kayak, a visit to the castle at Methoni. Long lunch somewhere small. Quiet afternoon. One lighter thing before dinner — a glass of wine at a winery, a stop at an olive press, an evening walk into Pylos. Repeat, in a slightly different direction, the following day.
You don’t come here for the hotel. You come here for the landscape the hotel happens to sit in.
— Yannis, one of our field guides, Messinia
Three half-days we’d repeat
- The Gialova lagoon walk. Flat, shady, twelve kilometres if you loop it back on the beach. Best flamingo-watching between February and May. Bring binoculars you don’t mind dropping in water.
- Methoni castle at 7am. Thirty minutes south. The causeway light is the reason to get up early. Coffee afterwards in the harbour.
- An afternoon on the Nedon river. Forty minutes inland, under plane trees, water cold enough to wake up a sunburned foot. A taverna two hundred metres from the swimming hole does one thing — grilled sausages — and does it correctly.
How not to do it
The most common mistake we see is treating the Peloponnese as an island destination. It is not. You cannot do Costa Navarino as a two-night stopover on the way to Santorini; the drive from Athens is four hours on a good day, the ferry infrastructure is nonexistent, and you will spend more time in a car than in the place itself. We recommend either a full week here, or not at all.
The second most common mistake is booking for July or August. It’s not impossible — it’s not even bad — but the light is harder, the sea is flatter, and the hotels are full. September is the best month in the region. The sea is still warm. The crowds are gone. The figs are in. If you can move your trip, move it to September.
Finally: rent a car. It is not a place to be without one. The bus system exists but it is not built for visitors. A compact is enough — almost every interesting road here is a one-lane village road that turns into something narrower when you least expect it. Don’t take the bigger vehicle. You will regret it at the first wall.
In closing
I have been coming to Messinia for six years now, on and off, in every season. I still find new beaches. I still find new olive presses. I still find new short-cuts that turn out to be longer than the long way. Costa Navarino is, more than anywhere else on the peninsula, a place that rewards being in no particular hurry. Come for a week. Bring a swimsuit you don’t mind losing. Don’t try to see everything.
And if you see me in the car park at Voidokilia at six in the morning, don’t say hello. I’m concentrating on the sunrise.