I’m standing in ankle-deep emerald seawater so clear I could count every pebble at the bottom. Earlier this morning, I arrived on the uninhabited island of Daskalio, as 1970s hits from a legendary Greek duo, Stelios Kazantzidis & Marinella, blasted from the boat that got me there. The captain, Giorgos Georgidakis, is pulling souvlaki off the boat’s grill while his niece, Sofia, passes me plates of spanakopita made by her grandmother to bring ashore.
We eat lunch on the quiet beach, before I hike up the path to a small chapel where Giorgos, Sofia, and other residents of the nearby village of Tolo gather once a year for post-Easter service and snacks. From above, emerald, sapphire, and cobalt-hued water surrounding the Peloponnese Peninsula—which is roughly the size of the country of Slovenia—stretches as far as the eye can see. “Greeks are very attached to the sea,” Irini Dusendschoen from Trekking Hellas, the company that organized my trip, tells me. “We need to be able to see it.”
Hugged by three seas—the Ionian from the west, the Mediterranean from the south, and the Aegean from the east—the 860-some miles of twisting, jagged Peloponnese coastline and its mountains have been Greece’s well-kept secret for decades. Only 3 in every 100 foreign travelers reached this westernmost Greek peninsula in 2025, even though it’s just a few hours by car from Athens. That’s about to change, though. Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster, The Odyssey, revisits Homer’s 3,000-year-old story this year, and with it, shines a light on real-life places where the mythical Greek king Odysseus lived, fought, and loved.
Shot partially on location in southernmost Messinia, one of five administrative regions making up the Peloponnese, the film follows a harrowing journey of a man trying to return home against all odds. The Greek concept of xenia—the unwritten hospitality contract binding guests and hosts to a set of rules—is a major theme in The Odyssey, as is nostos, translated loosely as homecoming.
It’s a story perhaps all too familiar to people like Nikos Stakias, who has dedicated the next chapter of his life to the land where he was born. Stakias worked in hospitality in England, Cyprus, Athens, and elsewhere over the course of two decades before returning to the peninsula for its slower pace and quality of life. For the past three years, he’s been part of an effort to launch the community-led Peloponnese Trail Network, the largest hiking network in Greece, which connects nearly 1,200 miles of ancient footpaths to the Peloponnese’s many small villages.
This new trail project is the latest effort to open the peninsula to the world: In the early 2000s, new highways and tunnels made the commute from Athens much faster. Costa Navarino eco-retreat by Messinian ship captain Vassilis Constantakopoulos opened its doors about a decade ago; Constantakopoulos wanted to transform his birthplace into a premier travel destination, while also putting a plug on the exodus of Peloponnese residents to the capital and beyond. (Costa Navarino now leases its land to the likes of W Hotels and Mandarin Oriental—opened in 2022 and 2023, respectively—and brands like Four Seasons and Six Senses are expected to follow suit next year.)
