Both our and the neighbouring villa's family went on Mario's day cruise. Be prepared to book in advance - popular it seems. Bought our tickets from the supermarket just before the Puerto Roma turn-off on the Zante-Vasilikos road (36 euros adults, 26 for kids)

Excellent, difficult to praise too highly and easily the highlight of our holiday. Seems only fair we should say something nice about it on this web site and draw to the attention of others by way of a big efharisto..

Describing this as just another glass bottom boat trip bit would be as silly as saying that Mario is just another boat skipper - be prepared for something different !

An action packed (4 cave/swim stops), highly informative, ecologically friendly (even the big headed graduate marine biologist in our party who use to work on turtles on Zakythos many years ago (me..) was silenced), well planned (3 land stops for coffee, lunch and a swim/doze on turtle island), family friendly (kids get most of the attention - make sure you bring a camera !) and good humoured
day out.

This is the also the first boat trip we've been on in the Med where health and safety seemed to be taken seriously - eg the pep talk at the start of the trip re life jackets etc, presence of a diver/life guard to help and show the way (always the first in the water and last out at each swim stop), not letting us go in the water when a jellyfish was spotted at one stop, being suitably assertive when the kids got too near to rocks, putting up sun shades etc etc

The honesty in pointing out its impossible to guarantee seeing a turtle was also appreciated. In the event we did, the diver again coming to the rescue and guiding the boat towards one - funny how other, bigger, boats followed us !

Be prepared to muck-in though - especially kids ! All of ours go to have a go at the wheel - I also overheard Mario's mate (the diver) telling my son to turn the boat starboard into a wave so as to get his mum and dad wet - my boy enjoyed that bit...

Also not rushed, and with a very flexible itinery, in true Zakynthos spirit. We were out for nearly nine hours although the stops on route did'nt make this seem like an especially long day out. He offered to stop and drop off people at the neighbouring resort on the return trip - can't imagine many boat owners doing that. Goes without saying though, important to bring sunblock, hats etc.

When compared to other boats we've been on the difference here seemed to be the size of the boat (small enough to get close to things but big enough to withstand a relatively breezy day), size of the group (capacity of just 25) and the "crew" itself ; Mario, his mate (a mancunian ?!), girlfriend and daughter.

This was one of those trips though where we were all made to feel like crew...

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Loved the holiday, locals, villa and fellow holiday makers

From our + our neighbours experience though, Manos seem like a company who have given up the will to live - one view at our resort was that it had something to do with them being the subject of recent takeover

eg, being told at the airport they had "no idea" where our villa was when asked to mark it on a map (we'd hired a car from the airport), there attitude when we raised serious safety/practical probs with our villa.... "thats the way the Greeks are" (racist ?), "its cheaper to eat out" (then why pretend its self catering ?) and, most irritating, "raise it with the owner" (is'nt that you job ?!), emergency contact nos leading to a Greek answer phone message or someone saying they work for a different company and so on

Apols to Manos employees if this was just a "one off"

We had a great holiday but are unsure what, exactly, Manos do..