The Diapontian Islands in Summer: Day Trips to Othonoi, Erikoussa and Mathraki
Northwest of Corfu, beyond the cape of Arillas where the island’s coastline turns and the open sea begins in earnest, three small islands sit in the Ionian at the furthest northwestern edge of Greece. Othonoi, Erikoussa, and Mathraki are the Diapontian Islands, and they are among the most remote, most naturally unspoiled, and least visited inhabited islands in the entire Greek archipelago. Their position, in the open sea between Corfu and Italy, has protected them from the tourist development that has transformed much of the Greek island world over the past half century, and the life that continues on these three islands in July 2026 is, in its essentials, closer to what Greek island life looked like fifty years ago than to what it looks like in most of the places that tourists now reach in numbers.
A day trip to the Diapontioi from Corfu is not a trip to a destination that has been prepared for visitors. It is a trip to a place that exists for its own reasons and that receives visitors as it has always received travellers passing through: with a hospitality that is genuine precisely because it is not professional, and with a natural beauty that is exceptional precisely because it has not been curated.
The Crossing
The ferry from Agios Stefanos on the northwest coast of Corfu to the Diapontian Islands crosses water that changes character as soon as the shelter of the Corfiot coast is left behind. The open Ionian northwest of Corfu is a different sea from the sheltered channel of the northeast coast or the enclosed bays of the northwest: deeper, more restless, the swell reflecting the fetch of open water that extends to the Italian coast and beyond without significant interruption.
The crossing to Erikoussa takes approximately one hour from Agios Stefanos, the boat moving northwest across water that in the clear July morning has the deep blue of the open Ionian rather than the turquoise of the sheltered inshore zones. Corfu recedes behind the ferry, its outline clarifying as a single elongated island as the distance increases, and the Diapontian Islands appear ahead as dark shapes on the horizon that grow slowly into the detail of inhabited land: the white of the houses, the green of the vegetation, the particular combination of rock and scrub and sea that defines each island’s individual character.
The crossing from Corfu Town’s New Port is longer, taking approximately three hours to reach the furthest of the three islands, and is better suited to overnight visitors than to day trippers. The Agios Stefanos departure, shorter and more direct, is the natural choice for guests at Villa Kapella planning a day trip excursion to any of the three islands.
Erikoussa: The Beautiful Island
Erikoussa is the Diapontian island that most immediately rewards the day trip visitor. The island’s main beach, a long arc of fine sand on the eastern coast facing back toward Corfu, is considered among the finest in the Ionian and provides the immediate sensory reward of a beach of exceptional natural quality in conditions of relative solitude that the more accessible beaches of Corfu cannot match in July.
The sand at Erikoussa is white and fine in a way that is unusual in the Ionian islands, where pebble beaches are the norm and sandy beaches the exception. The water offshore is shallow for a considerable distance, graduating from the almost colourless transparency of the very shallow zone through the pale turquoise of the intermediate depth to the blue of the open sea beyond the sandy bottom. In July, the combination of the sandy beach, the clear shallow water, and the gentle conditions produced by the island’s eastern orientation makes Erikoussa’s main beach one of the finest family swimming environments available on a day trip from Corfu.
The village of Erikoussa, a small settlement of whitewashed houses clustered around the harbour where the ferry arrives, provides the limited services that the island offers its day visitors. A small number of tavernas open through the summer season, serving food that is simple, honest, and produced from the limited but genuine local resources that the island’s fishing and small-scale agriculture provide. Lunch at one of these tavernas, at a table on the harbour with the ferry that will return you to Corfu visible in the bay and the particular quiet of the island surrounding everything, is one of the most genuinely remote eating experiences available within a day trip of Villa Kapella.
Mathraki: The Quiet Island
Mathraki is the smallest of the three Diapontian islands and the quietest, its limited population and minimal tourist infrastructure creating conditions of tranquility that the other two islands, marginally busier and marginally better equipped, cannot quite match. The island receives fewer day trippers than Erikoussa, partly because its beach, though beautiful, is less immediately spectacular than Erikoussa’s sandy arc, and partly because its reputation as the remotest and quietest of the three attracts specifically the visitor seeking those qualities rather than the visitor looking for the best beach.
The population of Mathraki is small enough that the arrival of the ferry is an event of some significance to the island’s daily rhythm, and the welcome that day visitors receive reflects the genuine island hospitality of a community that has not been sufficiently visited to have developed the more professional and less personal hospitality of a fully tourist-oriented destination.
The path that leads from the harbour into the island’s interior, through scrub vegetation and olive terraces that have been cultivated for generations by families who have lived on this small island through conditions of isolation and self-sufficiency that the modern visitor can barely imagine, delivers a sense of geographical remoteness that the distance from Corfu, barely forty kilometres, might not suggest. Mathraki, in July, is as far from the Corfu beach resort as it is possible to be while remaining within the reach of a day trip.
Othonoi: The Largest Island
Othonoi is the largest of the three Diapontian islands and the most fully equipped for visitors, its village of Ammos providing a range of tavernas, small shops, and basic accommodation that makes it the most self-sufficient day trip destination of the three. The island is also the most historically significant of the Diapontioi, its position at the northwestern edge of Greece giving it strategic importance that the other two islands, smaller and less well positioned, do not share.
The village of Othonoi has the character of a Greek island community that has maintained its essential character through the changes of the past century without being significantly altered by tourism or by the modernisation that more accessible islands have undergone. The kafeneion where the older men of the island gather in the morning, the church that provides the social and spiritual centre of the community, the small harbour where the fishing boats sit alongside the ferry when it is in port, all of these compose a scene of Greek island life that is entirely genuine and entirely unperformed.
The beaches of Othonoi, accessible by footpath from the village, are of good quality and in July offer the particular combination of natural beauty and relative solitude that the island’s remote position naturally provides. The snorkelling around the island’s rocky coastline is excellent, the water clarity of the open Ionian producing underwater visibility that the more sheltered and more visited waters around the main Corfu coastline do not consistently achieve.
Planning the Diapontian Day Trip
A day trip to the Diapontian Islands from Villa Kapella requires an early start, the drive to Agios Stefanos on the northwest coast preceding the ferry departure that the schedule demands. The July ferry timetable from Agios Stefanos allows a full day on whichever island is chosen before the return ferry in the late afternoon, with sufficient time on the island for a proper exploration, a swim, and the unhurried lunch that the island tavernas invite.
Booking ferry tickets in advance is essential in July, when the limited capacity of the Diapontian ferries can make last-minute places unavailable. The Villa Kapella team can advise on current ferry schedules and the most reliable booking methods for the peak season service.
The Diapontian Islands day trip is not the easiest excursion available from Villa Kapella in July. The early start, the ferry crossing, and the limited facilities of the islands require more preparation than a beach day at Paleokastritsa or a morning in Corfu Town. But the experience that the excursion delivers, a day on an island that the modern tourist world has not yet fully reached, in conditions of natural beauty and genuine remoteness that the more accessible parts of the Ionian cannot provide, is worth every element of the preparation it requires.
The Diapontioi are what the Greek islands were before the world discovered them. A day trip from Villa Kapella in July is, briefly, the opportunity to discover them for yourself.