High class, low cost

To take full advantage, though, you’ve got to swallow your snobbery. While we’re all crazy about low-cost flights, there’s a lingering social stigma attached to low-cost package holidays. It’s partly a problem of presentation. We’ve all seen those handwritten cards in travel agents’ windows, the ads on Teletext and the web: “Amazing last-minute bargains — just £100!” And most of us have ignored them. After all, if you pay that little for a week in the Med, surely all you’ll get is a nightmare flight to a cockroach-infested tower block? It stands to reason: pay bottom dollar and you’ll get a bum deal.

Not necessarily. Yes, you’ll be booked into a popular tourist resort, but it doesn’t have to be a hellhole. If you can hold your nerve and book a day or two before departure, you’ll find prices reduced by as much as 70%, which brings some pretty decent holidays into the £100-odd bracket. In any case, remember — the quality of the resort isn’t the main point. You’re using this as a springboard to your sort of holiday: if the town itself has zero appeal, just spend one night resting up before heading off, refreshed, the next day. It’s a great holiday plan in theory, but what’s it like in practice? To find out, we needed a guinea pig — and that guinea pig was me.

THE PACKAGE

Five-thirty pm, Friday: time to hit the internet. My mission was clear: to find the cheapest possible foreign holiday departing the next day, book it on the spot, then, armed with nothing but a guidebook, a photographer and as much initiative as I could gather, use it to have a great, authentic Mediterranean holiday.

I scrolled through half-a-dozen sites and saw bargains come and go — the last- second market moves very, very fast. There were weeks in Mallorca, Fuerteventura and the Costa del Sol, all at about £100; the cheapest, though, was to Parga, in Greece, for a measly £89. I’d never heard of Parga, but it sounded ominously medical. Still, rules are rules: there was a flight leaving at 5am the next day, and with a few clicks and a quick phone call, I was on it.

The supplements had added up, though. With booking fee, ticket pick-up fee and airport transfers, the real cost had risen to £119. To find out if I was really getting a good deal, I went online again. First, what if I bought a flight-only ticket to Preveza, the destination airport? Pretty good result there: the cheapest price I could get was £259. That was £140 more than my holiday, with no transfers or accommodation.

Next, I tried to find the original brochure price for the trip. Although I’d booked through Fast Track Holidays, a last-minute specialist broker, the operator was Libra, so I went to its website — where an identical week was listed at £376. Suddenly, those little extras were put into perspective: this was a cracking deal. Whether it was a good idea, though, remained to be seen.

THE JOURNEY

I was up early — very, very early — the next morning. Gatwick at 3am is not a place to soothe the soul. A gang of lads, bound for the Canaries, had clearly come straight from a lock-in at their local. Rolling along the travelator, they wore matching football shirts, each adorned with an individual slogan. “I’m not fat, I’m pregnant,” announced one. It was obviously going to be a robust child.

But while the timing was brutal, the service was silky-smooth. The tickets were waiting, the check-in was fast, the flight was on time and comfortable. At the other end, the well-oiled machine took over again: Jennie, the smiling rep, directed us to the air-conditioned coach and off we went, 10 minutes after touchdown.

She clued us in on Parga on the way. “The bus station is right by the Chinese restaurant,” she said, which didn’t sound that hopeful. The bumph she handed us advertised optional outings. There was a “Meze Mingle” evening and a “Ruins and Rambles” day.

“Will you be booking any of our outings?” she asked with a smile. She said everything with a smile.

“No, I’d sooner slam my genitals in a garage door,” I replied. Well, I didn’t — to be honest, she scared me — but I did think it. I was starting to suspect that Parga was not my sort of place.

THE RESORT

Our accommodation was called Ideal House. It wasn’t, I’d say, a wise choice of name. It might arouse expectations that couldn’t be fulfilled. The small, three-storey block was advertised as overlooking olive groves, which it did; it also backed onto a neighbour’s yard, which was generously stocked with chunks of rusting agricultural machinery. The view from the balcony, though, was pretty enough — trees and fields punctuated by a smattering of neat, low-rise buildings — and the room, while tiny, was all sparkling white tiles, with a good shower and a kitchenette. It was, as Dwayne The Kiwi Photographer, put it, “Pretty blahdy good for 89 quid.” Perfectly Adequate House, then, or PAH for short. I tried to suggest the name to Nikos, the perfectly nice owner, but I don’t think I got my point across.

Valtos Beach was five minutes’ walk away: a 1,000-yard strip of good sand with sun loungers, tavernas and watersports on tap. On a Saturday afternoon, it was dominated by strutting Greek dads, their big brown bellies wobbling over their tiny black thongs. Parga town, the centre of the resort, was a five-minute, 70p water-taxi ride from there. Off we chugged, keen to inspect our own personal holiday hell, and happy in the knowledge that we’d be heading off in a day or two in any case.

But Parga obviously hadn’t read the script. It was almost nice. Okay, so it’s busy, and a little scruffy around the edges, and it’s hardly an authentic experience: you can find burger bars, English breakfasts and a tattoo parlour. For lunch, we went to the first place that took our eye on the waterfront, where a genial Scottish waitress served us Mexican fajitas (DTKP) and Thai green curry (me). Around the corner, a crude poster disconcertingly advertised “Greek night at Viamas restaurant!”. Intrigued by the idea of a Greek night in Greece, I went and asked what it consisted of.

“Oh, we have music and dancing,” said the waiter, in perfect English. What sort of music? “We have Demis Roussos!” he replied proudly. I didn’t book.

But, in the last-minute lottery, Parga is not a bad place to be — not the jackpot, maybe, but four numbers at least. The setting is superb: a picturesque steep-sided bay with a small, castle-topped island just 50 yards offshore. The busy harbourfront holds some fine old buildings, and behind, mountains tower over the town. Looking out over the clear blue water, the Ionian islands of Paxos and Antipaxos are low, lustrous shapes on the horizon. It has a relaxed, family atmosphere too: the early-evening throng along the seafront was lively without being lairy.

As the sun set over the castle ramparts, I downed a cele- bratory glass of wine and DTKP downed three celebratory beers. We’d got lucky. Maybe this wasn’t Greece, but it was a nice place to be all the same.

THE ALTERNATIVE

It took a couple of days for Parga’s constant round of sun, sea and unlikely cuisine to begin to pall. In fact, we might still be there now if we hadn’t had the following conversation:

Me: “You know those inflatable bananas they tow across the bay?”

DTKP: “Behind speedboats. Yeah.”

Me: “Are they starting to look like ... sort of ... fun?”

DTKP: “Er ... yeah.”

We were going native. It was time to move on.

While Jennie helpfully sorted us a deal on the hire car (tour reps can come in handy), we perused the Rough Guide. To the west were Paxos and Antipaxos, but, pretty as they apparently were, their main draw was beaches, and we had plenty of those right here. Due north was Albania: a little too intrepid for our taste, thanks. South was ... well, nothing much, apparently. Northeast, though, was the Zagori: high mountains, fairy-tale slate villages, plenty of history and mainland Europe’s deepest gorge. That’ll do nicely.

Time is a funny thing. It took just three hours to drive to the Zagori, but we seemed to have travelled back 300 years. Where the baking streets of Parga were choked with traffic, here the tiny roads wriggled along high mountain passes, almost empty apart fromsonorously clanging herds of goats. It was high season, and we’d been told the area would be crawling with well-to-do Greeks. In fact, it seemed almost deserted, and we found a room at the first hotel we came to — Elati House (00 30 26510 75247), a pretty pile of old stone with big rooms, wooden floors and a spectacular terrace view. On the owner’s recommendation, we made for the village of Monodendri. It’s perched on the edge of the world’s steepest gorge, Vikos. I’m a sucker for this sort of thing anyway, but even if rocks bore you rigid, this is a gobsmacking sight: a 3,000ft-deep gash running six miles through the mountains, its walls as near vertical as makes no difference.

Hanging on the very edge of the sheer cliffs is the monastery of St Paraskevi. Built from the same dark, chunky slate as the village above, it’s small enough to have a slightly Toytown feel about it, though it’s been here for nearly six centuries. In the tiny, frescoed chapel, the only other tourists in the place, a couple of Athenians on a short break, lit candles and leant to kiss an icon in its silver frame. That same, almost unthinking gesture must have been made a million times in this place: somehow, after the casual bustle of Parga, it seemed uniquely touching.

The next few days passed peacefully: exploring mountain villages, walking the dramatic trails around the gorge, eating fresh and authentic Greek food, drinking local roditis wine and tsipouro spirit. It suited me down to the ground: here, I thought, was proof that going off-piste works. However, my idea of holiday perfection wasn’t entirely shared by my companion.

PARTY TIME

“What we need,” said DTKP, “is a bit of action.”

Perhaps he had a point. We’d been living a pretty quiet life, and even I was beginning to get twitchy. So it was lucky that, on our last two nights, we had some “action” lined up: first, a paniyiri, or local festival, in the Zagori village of Kapesovo; then, on our final evening, a full-on night of clubbing back in Parga.

On the one hand, I was interested in both for intellectual reasons: you can tell a lot about a community by the way it goes about having a good time, and the two nights would point up the contrasts you can expect in a holiday like this. And on the other hand, I wanted to get drunk. I couldn’t lose.

Kapesovo first. When we arrived, at about 12.30am, a four-piece band — violin, clarinet, tambourine and laouto, a sort of mandolin — were sitting in the middle of the main village square. They played the local Epirote folk music: strange, atonal but peculiarly catchy, and about as far from Demis Roussos as you could reasonably get. Around the players, about 150 local villagers were holding hands and dancing in a series of concentric circles. And around them, at least a thousand more sat and gossiped at the tables and chairs that were crammed into the square.

Whole families, from toddlers to grandparents, were out for the night: teenagers flirted, old men gossiped, beer bottles clanked and huge piles of souvlakia skewers were stripped of their glistening chunks of lamb. Nobody spoke English, and it didn’t matter, because the looks on their faces and the light in their eyes told you all you needed to know — we’re having a great time here, and we’re doing it our way.

I was jealous for a moment. Where many of our own folk traditions are lifeless re-creations of their former selves — Morris dancing, for instance, a fertility rite performed by men who couldn’t get laid in a thousand years — in the Zagori, these festivals are vital, vigorous things. There were trysts being made and broken that night, friendships reinforced, childhood memories laid down and brain cells massacred in their billions. We stayed for hours.

Hangovers were being laid down in Parga, too, but that’s where the similarities stopped. For our last night, it was back to the coast, and the resort’s top nightclub, the Camares. Actually, it wasn’t bad: the DJ played commercial house and a fair share of crowd-pleasers — Mis-teeq, Madonna — and at 2am, the floor was heaving with resort workers and tourists.

At three, though, we were out of there. It wasn’t just that we had a plane to catch the next day. You can find clubs like the Camares all over the Med: like the resorts they inhabit, they’re great fun in small doses. And I’d had about as much as the doctor ordered.

THE VERDICT

Parga may be a comparatively classy example of its type, but it’s still essentially a package resort, and package resorts are like junk food: they’re cheap and easy, and we all secretly enjoy them once in a while. The Zagori, on the other hand, is like genuine local cuisine — fresh, meaty, the sort of diet you can really thrive on.

The off-piste holiday works best if you’re prepared to enjoy both on their own terms. Yes, it makes financial sense, and it’s convenient, but that’s only part of the appeal. It’s really about being able to mix and match two completely different types of holiday, and seeing the virtues in each.

So pack away your higher critical faculties, break out your sombrero and fake Ray-Bans, and enjoy the package resort for what it is, even if you only stay a day or so — as a travel experience, it’s not intrinsically any less “genuine” than the unspoilt areas you’ll be heading for next. When you do make good your escape, the contrast between the two will make that authentic main course all the sweeter.

What’s the damage?

THERE’S NO point going off-piste from a cheap package if you end up spending a king’s ransom on the touring side of your holiday.

So how much did our four-day Zagori jaunt add to the cost? Here’s the final bill, per person:

The package: £89

Fees and transfers: £30

Four nights at the Elati House hotel: £71

Four days’ car hire: £57

Petrol: £17

TOTAL: £264

Okay, so the add-ons cost more than the package itself, but in the scheme of things, it’s still an outrageously cheap holiday — just a fiver more, in fact, than the best price we could find for a flight-only deal.