Why Gerald Durrell’s idyll is calling time on British louts
Once a holiday island loved by families, its hotspots have been overrun by our booze-ridden, drug-taking teens. Now Corfu locals are cracking down and vowing to take it back upmarket . . .
T HE time is two in the morning and the flower of British youth is doing its best to do its worst in Kavos. Here, in this corner of Greece, there is a reputation to maintain. The souvenir vests hanging in the windows of the tacky giftshops proclaim the aim: ‘Made in the UK — Destroyed in Kavos.’
Plastic beer glasses, discarded fast food and the odd patch of vomit cover the main strip, with its brightly-lit bars and clubs pumping out high-decibel music.
Groups of bare-chested males and scantily clad girls amble along in search of the next drink. Others are slumped by the roadside, semi-comatose.
This small resort, on the southern tip of Corfu, is well known as a destination for young people wanting to get off their heads — and at rock-bottom prices.
But change is coming to Kavos. Local people — led by an organisation called the Kavos Cultural Association — are leading a backlash against the drunken British youth who now dominate life in the resort. The protest coincides with a crackdown by the police on the town’s clubbing culture, with curfews on loud music and time being called on late-night drinking.
It’s not that the residents of Kavos are against tourism in general — far from it. They hope for the return of an older, quieter form of tourist — Brits with money to spend and a very different idea of nightlife.
Bars that play music too loud and too late are being shut down for ten days at a time, or issued with fines. The clampdown also applies to the party resorts of Laganas, on the Ionian island of Zakynthos, and Malia on Crete.
Judging by what I saw on my visit here, these emergency measures are long overdue. Some of the youngsters staggering along the resort’s nightclub strip are only 17. Others are a year older, fresh from their A-level examinations. Few appear to be much older than 20.
A fight almost breaks out: half a dozen young men chasing two others down the street, all of them British. There is shouting and swearing and plenty of posturing, but then the police turn up and the tension evaporates.
In the Rolling Stone club, two girls imbibe nitrous oxide or laughing gas, known to young users as ‘Nos’, from balloons. The bar staff take no notice.
British tourists coming in search of the idyllic Corfu portrayed in The Durrells — the ITV series inspired by the experiences of animal-lover and writer Gerald Durrell, who lived on the island
‘It’s changed — Kavos is a dirty paradise now’
with his family in the Thirties — will find not a trace of it in this booze-ridden ghetto.
Once, Kavos was a small fishing village, boasting just a couple of hundred people and three tavernas. Its tranquil isolation ended in 1980 with the arrival of mass tourism. Clubbing took off in the Nineties and has dominated the resort ever since.
The loud-mouthed youngsters who sully the resort, semi-naked on drink and drugs, are not in the slightest bit ashamed.
They even contribute photographs of their antics to a Facebook page celebrating Kavos’s ugly image — called ‘Turns out Kavos was ready for you’.
The pictures posted feature a collection of unconscious bodies — one strewn across a pile of refuse sacks, another cradling a washing-up bowl in preparation for the inevitable reckoning, and yet another in a death-like pose on the beach. In the comments below each photo, young tourists heading to Kavos warn each other: ‘That will be you.’
Sobriety is not an option in Kavos.
Drinks menus promise almost instant annihilation for the unwary. There is the Black Death, a cocktail boasting 250ml of pure alcohol, and the charminglynamed Headerf****r, a pint of spirits including the potent ingredient absinthe. The legal drinking age here is 17.
Spirits — cheap ones decanted into expensive-brand bottles to fool customers — can be bought for as little as 2.5 euros (£2.27).
And a Nos laughing gas canister, which fills a balloon offering a brief but sometimes fatal high, can be had for as little as one euro (90p). Police in Kavos have now banned balloons but their consumption continues regardless.
‘It is not a normal holiday,’ says Vagelis Aspiotis, president of the Kavos Cultural Association.
‘These kids just stare at the internet on their phones, use balloons and get drunk. We feel embarrassed for our town.’
It has been like this since tour operators realised there was big money to be made from shipping thousands of young Brits to Greece, Spain and Cyprus for coming-of-age flings. And the fuel for this clubbing industry is alcohol, together with copious amounts of ‘party’ drugs.
‘You can get anything in Kavos, if you ask,’ says Yannis Kantas, who grew up in old Kavos and still fishes the waters in the strait separating Corfu from mainland Greece. ‘ The big problem, though, is drink.
‘Kavos has changed from the paradise it was when I was a child into a dirty paradise — dirty streets, dirty beach.’
The police crackdown at the resort was spurred by the killing of an American tourist in the clubbing capital of Laganas on the island of Zakynthos.
Bakari Henderson, 22, from Texas, found himself embroiled in an argument with a gang over a female bartender. Nine men, mostly Serb but including a British subject of Serb origin, are alleged to have kicked Mr Henderson to death in a frenzied attack lasting just 30 seconds.
Kavos residents, who have long endured sleepless nights from the techno- music pumping through their walls until dawn, are only too relieved that action is finally being taken.
They say that the late-night drinking culture has driven decent family- tourists away. Kavos used to boast 10,000 visitors at any one time in the peak season, but that number has now fallen to about 7,000 — and the number of young has increased in proportion.
The season has also shrunk to just a couple of months, July and August, when once it began in June. In turn, this puts pressure
‘They strip off and perform obscene acts’
on the late-night bars and clubs to extract every last euro from their youthful clientele.
Souvenir shop owner Mr Aspiotis insists the crackdown on latenight music is long overdue.
‘The tourists have changed,’ he says. ‘We love the older British people, because they are the best tourists. But they read about Kavos on the internet and think it is not for them. The owners of the bars don’t think about these people. They just want kids.
‘The young people don’t spend money in the day because they sleep until the afternoon after drinking all night. And they don’t eat in restaurants — they just buy a kebab.’
Travel companies, says Mr Aspiotis, are directly responsible for the booze culture, staging bar-crawls in which groups of 300 or 400 young tourists are funnelled into establishments which pay for the privilege, or booze cruises.
Last year, the Kavos Cultural Association filed a legal complaint against Thomas Cook, Tui and Olympic, accusing them of damaging businesses by encouraging customers to go into certain venues. The resultant bar-crawl culture, the complaint alleged, resulted in scenes that ‘defamed’ Kavos.
Describing the behaviour of young party-goers, the complaint went on: ‘Under the influence of alcohol they quarrel with each other, as well as with anyone who happens to pass by, they cause damage to shops, hotel rooms, cars and buses, they strip
and perform inappropriate and obscene acts that offend public decency, our intelligence and dignity.’
The legal action stalled, however, due to lack of funds.
‘ We want Kavos to be for everyone,’ says Mr Aspiotis. ‘ We have a beautiful beach here. We would like to build a marina and a water park and make this into a nice place. But we get no help from the local government for this.
‘Slowly, slowly it will change,’ he adds, hopefully, as a result of the police clampdown on excessive behaviour and licensing laws.
The few locals who don’t want change are, of course, the bar owners and their employees who depend on young drunken tourists for their livelihoods.
At seven bars, such as Mojo and Madison’s, the shutters are down. More face closure this weekend after being issued with fines.
Their owners have violated the new rule imposed by the government, requiring bars to stop playing music no later than 2am. Three violations result in the venue being closed for 10 days. Heavy fines can also be levied.
Nowhere, at any time, can music above 80 decibels be played. Only nightclubs with sound-proofing are supposed to carry on after 2am. A bar owner who asks not to be named says the closures by police threaten businesses with bankruptcy.
‘If they close you for 10 days, you must send staff away and you lose business even after you open again,’ he says.
‘ Kavos is a music place for everyone, but especially young people. You cannot change it just like that.’
For now, what he says is true — and the party goes on.
A tattoo parlour run by Alex Stephanakis makes much of its money from late-night customers, emboldened by drink.
A typical customer recently asked for a tattoo of the children’s cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants on the customer’s backside.
Back on the strip, Mollie and Phoebe from Oxford are celebrating the end of their A-levels in typical Kavos style. It is now 3.30am. Does Mollie like Kavos? ‘Er yes,’ she offers. ‘I think so.’ Would she come back? ‘Yeah, I would. I think...’ Thinking is quite hard at this hour of the night, and with that she disappears back into the drink-sodden crowd.
In Kavos, there is always one more drink to swallow, one more sordid stunt to perform.