Argostoli Private Tour

An Argostoli private tour is a car or minivan tour of Kefalonia for your group alone, starting from a hotel or the cruise port in Argostoli, with a driver or a guide and stops chosen from the caves, Myrtos, Assos, Fiskardo and the wineries. Tours across the rest of the country are listed on Greece Tours.

The sections below cover the formats, cruise passengers, the Melissani and Drogarati caves, Myrtos, Assos and Fiskardo, the town tour, tastings, Agios Gerasimos and Mount Ainos, the vehicle and guide, duration and booking, with links into the Kefalonia pages. The tours shown are checked on GetYourGuide and Viator.

What is an Argostoli private tour?

An Argostoli private tour is a sightseeing trip that starts in Kefalonia’s capital and runs with your vehicle, driver and guide for your group. The route, the stops and the pace are set by the people in the car rather than by a coach timetable.

Argostoli has held the role of island capital since the middle of the eighteenth century, when trade moved down from the old hill town of Kastro to the sheltered bay. An Argostoli private tour uses that harbour town as its base. Pickup happens at the cruise terminal, at a seafront hotel or at the visitor centre on Leoforos Antoni Tritsi, and the shape of the day is agreed in the car.

The difference from a seat on a coach shows up in the small decisions. A private car parks at viewpoints that a large vehicle rolls past, waits while you swim, and turns back when a child has had enough. Drivers who were born on the island know the hour when the cave queue is short and the taverna on the water that still has a free table.

• A vehicle kept for your group for the whole booking
• Pickup and drop-off at the port, a hotel or the town centre
• A driver who speaks English and knows the mountain roads
• A route that can change while the day runs
• Optional extras such as a licensed guide or a winery visit

Which Argostoli private tour formats can you book?

The Argostoli private tour formats on the main booking platforms run from a two-hour tuk-tuk ride through town to a nine-hour island circuit, plus cave days, wine days, cruise-day trips and a full day on Ithaca.

A half-day highlights booking lasts about five hours and links the monastery at Omala with the Robola cooperative and one or two caves. A full island day inside an Argostoli private tour runs eight to ten hours and adds Assos, Fiskardo, Antisamos and a swim. Cave and beach combinations of about four hours suit a short port call, because the driving on that route is held to roughly one hour and three quarters.

Town tours use tuk-tuks with room for four guests that thread through lanes a coach cannot enter. Wine days of four to five hours stay in the Omala valley and the vineyards near the airport. A small-group day trip of nine hours links the monastery, a winery, both caves, Fiskardo, a Myrtos viewpoint and a honey tasting. A day on Ithaca, the island of Odysseus, adds a ferry crossing and a second island, and it fills a whole day of the Argostoli private tour calendar.

• Half-day highlights, about five hours
• Full island day, eight to ten hours
• Caves and a Myrtos viewpoint, about four hours
• Wine and produce tastings, four to five hours
• Tuk-tuk town tour, one to two hours
• Cruise-day trip built around the ship’s hours

How does an Argostoli private tour work for cruise passengers?

A cruise-day Argostoli private tour is timed to the ship’s arrival and departure, collects you at the terminal or on the pier, and returns you well before the gangway closes at the end of the call.

The cruise pier at Argostoli is a modern structure of three concrete islets joined to the shore by a corridor of about a hundred and seventy metres, with one berth. When a larger ship holds that berth, the second vessel anchors in the bay and tenders its passengers to the old harbour. A terminal building and an open-air theatre stand at the shore end of the corridor, which is the meeting point for an Argostoli private tour.

Ship calls in the season are long enough for a full circuit. A typical day brings a vessel alongside around eight in the morning and takes it out around six in the evening, which leaves ten hours ashore. Drivers who work the port follow the ship’s timetable, so a late arrival or an early all-aboard is absorbed without rebuilding the plan, and guests who want the wider port-day picture can compare it with the Kefalonia shore excursion formats.

Which Argostoli private tour visits the Melissani and Drogarati caves?

Two Argostoli private tour shapes cover both caves: a four-hour caves-only run and a half-day of about five hours that pairs Melissani and Drogarati with the monastery at Omala, the Robola cooperative and a photo stop above Myrtos beach.

Melissani is a cave and a sinkhole on the road between Sami and Agia Effimia, about five kilometres south-east of Agia Effimia. A collapse of the limestone roof opened part of the lake to the sky, and the water is brackish, fed in part by the sea that vanishes into the swallow holes at Argostoli. Greek myth calls the spot the cave of the nymphs, and excavations led by Spyridon Marinatos brought finds that now sit in the Archaeological Museum of Argostoli.

The visit is a rowing-boat crossing of ten to fifteen minutes, shared with other visitors, on water so clear that the boats look as if they float on air. Daylight falls through the broken roof and turns the water deep blue around the middle of the day. The Melissani cave page covers the geology, and tickets for both caves are bought together at the gate, so an Argostoli private tour can take the boat first and the cave second.

The Drogarati cave sits five kilometres from Sami at an altitude of a hundred and twenty metres and opened to visitors in the early nineteen sixties. It drops ninety-five metres, its ceiling reaches twenty metres, and the air holds a steady eighteen degrees with humidity near ninety per cent. The main chamber runs a hundred metres, and the flat lower hall measures sixty-five by forty metres, which is why concerts are staged in a space named the Apotheosis room.

• Melissani boat crossing of ten to fifteen minutes
• Cave tickets bought together at the gate
• Eighteen degrees inside Drogarati all year
• Speleothems that grow a centimetre a century
• A long stairway down into Drogarati

Which Argostoli private tour reaches Myrtos, Assos and Fiskardo?

A full-day Argostoli private tour of eight to ten hours is the shape that reaches Myrtos beach, Assos and Fiskardo in one run, with Melissani lake and a swim at Antisamos built in on the way.

Myrtos lies in the Pylaros district of the north-west, between the feet of Agia Dynati and Kalon Oros, which rises to nine hundred and one metres. Round white cobbles of marble make up the shore, and the particles that wash from them give the sea its turquoise colour. A steep road of about two kilometres with hairpin bends drops to the Myrtos beach shore from the village of Divarata, and every Argostoli private tour route north uses it.

Assos sits thirty-six kilometres north of Argostoli and was founded under Venetian rule, serving as the administrative capital of northern Kefalonia from the end of the sixteenth century. The castle on its peninsula was designed by the Italian engineer Marino Gentilini for the Venetian Senate and ranks among the largest in Greece. The village below the castle holds sixty-one residents. Assos is the lunch stop on the northern Argostoli private tour loop.

Fiskardo, the northernmost port of the island, stands thirty-two kilometres north of Argostoli and twenty-four kilometres north of Sami. It is the one place on Kefalonia that came through the great earthquake of the nineteen fifties with its houses intact, which is why Venetian fronts still line the quay. Ferries run from the bay across to Frikes on Ithaca and on to Lefkada, and the usual stop on an Argostoli private tour leaves about ninety minutes of free time on the waterfront.

What does an Argostoli private tour of the town show?

An Argostoli private tour of the town shows the De Bosset bridge, the Koutavos lagoon, the lighthouse on the peninsula and the pedestrian Lithostroto, with a stop at the harbour for the turtles, all inside an hour or two of slow driving and walking.

The De Bosset bridge crosses the bay on sixteen low stone arches, one of them filled, and runs to six hundred and eighty-nine metres, which makes it the longest stone bridge over the sea. It began as a wooden crossing and was rebuilt piece by piece in sandstone, and an obelisk stands on a small island along the way. The bridge separates the Koutavos lagoon from the bay and carries pedestrians only.

Koutavos lagoon lies east of the town beneath the castle of Saint George and serves as a feeding ground for the loggerhead turtle, Caretta caretta. A nature reserve today, it was once a swamp where malaria was rife, and turtles also surface beside the fishing boats in the harbour. The Fanari lighthouse, named for the little church of Agioi Theodoroi, went up under British rule in the eighteen twenties and was rebuilt with Doric columns after the earthquake.

Two kilometres from the centre, on the coastal road toward Lassi, lie the Katavothres swallow holes. Seawater pours into the rock at up to three metres a second and reappears fifteen kilometres away at Karavomylos as brackish water, and the wheel of an old sea mill still stands above one of the openings. Austrian geologists proved the route in the early nineteen sixties with green dye that took fifteen days to arrive. The town of Argostoli has a page of its own for the sights themselves.

Which Argostoli private tour adds wine, olive oil or honey tastings?

A wine, olive oil or honey tasting can be added to almost any Argostoli private tour, and two shapes build the day around it: a half-day wine run of four to five hours and a full-day island circuit with a winery stop.

Robola is a grape unique to southern Kefalonia and gives a dry white of moderate strength, between twelve and thirteen per cent, with high acidity and notes of lemon, green apple and white peach. The growing zone covers Omala and the villages of Troianata, Vlachata, Mousata, Faraklata and Dilinata. The growers’ cooperative opened in the early nineteen eighties with three hundred members, and its Kefalonia wine tasting room stands at an altitude of four hundred and ten metres below Mount Ainos, beside the monastery of Agios Gerasimos.

Tastings there are free on weekdays, and from late spring to the end of October the doors open seven days a week. Eight wines are poured with the monastery in view, and the cooperative presses close to seven tenths of the island’s robola crop. A full-day route adds a distillery and winery in the Omala area, where wines, spirits and island produce are shown, and a shop in Argostoli town for honey, olive oil and sweets.

Cave days and wine days also merge. A five-hour Argostoli private tour pairs Drogarati and Melissani with a wine tasting and pickup from Argostoli hotels, and the entrance tickets for the two caves are settled at the gate. A longer day can carry the same pairing north to Fiskardo and Assos.

Can an Argostoli private tour visit Agios Gerasimos and Mount Ainos?

Yes, one Argostoli private tour combines the monastery of Agios Gerasimos at Omala with a drive up Mount Ainos, and the pairing fits a half day because the two lie on the same side of the island.

The monastery sits at the foot of Mount Ainos on the site of an older house of prayer from the start of the thirteenth century, and it is dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. The people of Valsamata call it New Jerusalem. Saint Gerasimos, patron of Kefalonia, settled there in the middle of the sixteenth century and died in the late fifteen seventies, and his relic rests in a silver urn in the smaller church.

The three plane trees he planted and the three wells he dug still stand in the grounds, and his hermitage can be entered down a near-vertical iron stair about three metres long, where visitors kneel inside the narrow space below. The feast falls on the sixteenth of August and draws pilgrims from across the island. A private stop runs twenty to twenty-five minutes, and the Agios Gerasimos monastery page covers the site in more depth.

Mount Ainos is the highest ground in the Ionian group at one thousand six hundred and twenty-eight metres, on bedrock of dolomite and limestone. The range forms the only terrestrial national park in the Ionian Islands, about three thousand hectares of Greek fir and black pine, with semi-wild ponies in the forest and pines between seven hundred and one thousand two hundred metres. A road climbs from the north-west to the transmitter station, and the Mount Ainos page sets out those routes.

Which vehicle, driver and guide come with an Argostoli private tour?

An Argostoli private tour comes with an air-conditioned car or minivan kept for your group and an English-speaking local driver, and a licensed guide can be added as a separate booking when you want commentary at each stop.

The vehicle is a private car, a limousine, a minivan or a mini-coach with air conditioning, and it stays with the group from pickup to drop-off. A tuk-tuk seats four guests and slips down lanes a coach cannot use. Infant seats are offered on the listings that mention them, and a town stroll of about four kilometres is listed as wheelchair accessible while the caves are not, because of the stairway.

The driver is a local who speaks English. Two of the listings are plain about what they sell: the all-day island route states that it is not a guided tour and asks guests to say if they want a guide added, and the caves-and-Fiskardo run sells two levels of the same day, one with a driver and one with a driver and a guide. Drivers meet the ship at the pier with a sign carrying your name.

A guide is a separate booking from the vehicle, and cave tickets are separate again. Drivers who carry guests with limited mobility keep a stepping stool on board, drop passengers at the closest point to a stop, and time the lake visit to catch a short queue. Ask for a licensed guide when you book an Argostoli private tour, because such a guide is not waiting at the pier.

How long does an Argostoli private tour last, and what is included?

An Argostoli private tour runs from one hour for a tuk-tuk loop of the town to ten hours for a full island day, and the usual half-day booking lasts four to five hours with the vehicle, the driver and fuel included.

Durations climb with the distance covered. The tuk-tuk loop takes one to two hours, the town stroll three, the caves about four, a wine day four to five, the half-day five, a caves-and-Fiskardo run six, and the full island day eight to ten. Private transport, an English-speaking driver, pickup and drop-off at the port or hotel, bottled water and an island map all come as standard on the listings that an Argostoli private tour is sold through.

Extras appear on particular bookings. A glass of wine, a plate of mezes, a traditional Riganada snack, a free taste of local products at a shop in town and entrance tickets for both caves are each listed on one route or another. Where tickets are included the operator buys them at the gate, and where they are left out the guest pays on the day. Lunch stops are arranged, but the food is at your own cost.

Timing shapes the day more than distance does. Coaches reach the lake from mid-morning, so a private car that goes to Melissani at opening time walks straight to the boat. Drogarati ends with a long climb back up, and the boat crossing lasts ten to fifteen minutes. Driving on the caves route comes to about one hour and three quarters in total, which leaves the rest of the Argostoli private tour for the stops themselves.

How do you book and cancel an Argostoli private tour?

You book an Argostoli private tour through the main booking platforms or with a local operator, choose a date and a group size, and cancel free of charge up to twenty-four hours before the start.

Booking runs through a platform or straight with a local operator. You pick a date and a group size, and the total changes with the number of travellers. Platforms let you reserve a place now and pay nothing until the day, and the private listings read here carry free cancellation up to twenty-four hours before the start of an Argostoli private tour for a full refund, with a mobile ticket accepted at the meeting point.

Cruise passengers are asked for the ship name, the docking time, the disembarkation time and the re-boarding time, and hotel guests are asked for the address so the driver can meet them. Confirmation arrives at the time of booking on the listings that say so, and within forty-eight hours where an operator states that. Popular dates fill early, and one full island day is booked on average eighty-four days ahead.

• Choose a date, a group size and a pickup point
• Pay at booking or on the day, depending on the platform
• Free cancellation up to twenty-four hours ahead
• Give the ship name and hours for port pickups
• Drop a stop if the ship sails earlier than planned

Frequently Asked Questions

Is an Argostoli private tour worth it for a couple?

For two people the gain sits in time saved rather than in the headline total. A private car reaches Melissani before the coaches, changes the order of the stops when a queue forms, and adds a swim at Antisamos that a fixed coach route leaves out. A group of four or six shares the same booking, which spreads the cost across the car.

Do Argostoli private tours run outside the summer season?

Ship calls thin out away from the main season, and the caves keep shorter hours, so a booking in December or January is arranged on request. The tuk-tuk loop and the water-based trips run from spring to autumn. Operators confirm winter availability within a day or two, and a private booking is easier to place than a coach departure.

Can an Argostoli private tour suit a guest who cannot manage steps?

Yes. Drivers who work with older guests keep a stepping stool and drop passengers at the closest point to each stop. Drogarati has a long stairway, so a guest who cannot manage steps waits near the entrance while the rest of the group goes down. Melissani has fewer steps, and the town stroll is listed as wheelchair accessible.

How far is the cruise port from the centre of Argostoli?

The terminal sits about a kilometre from the main square, on the road that follows the bay toward Lassi. Walking takes about fifteen minutes on flat pavement, and a taxi covers the distance in about five minutes. Drivers collecting at the port meet you at the exit of the terminal building and hold a sign with your name.