Greece Has Its Own Pig Beach, and Almost No One Knows About It

Forget the Bahamas: Greece has its own answer to the famous swimming pigs of the Caribbean, but the animals aren’t a deliberate tourist attraction.

On a remote Greek island, the beachgoers sometimes have four legs, snouts, and a rather casual attitude toward swimming. Black pigs roam an otherwise undeveloped landscape, occasionally wandering down to the shoreline and into the impossibly blue water. There are no beach clubs, no visitor facilities, and no organized animal encounters. The pigs simply live here.

The scene invites comparisons with the Bahamas’ famous swimming pigs (or Circe’s island of transformed pigs), but the resemblance only goes so far. There is no regular ferry service, no permanent population, and little in the way of infrastructure. For years, the island was known mainly to sailors exploring the coastline. Then social media discovered its unusual residents. Now travelers are showing up to see the pigs for…