About this site
An independent guide to one place: Melissani Cave, the collapsed-roof lake at Karavomylos, two kilometres from Sami on the east coast of Kefalonia, and the ten-to-fifteen-minute rowing boat that is the visit. The site exists to answer the practical questions — the ticket, the hours, the queue, the steps, the way there without a car — and to compare the six GetYourGuide day tours that include the cave. It is not the cave’s operator, which is the Municipality of Sami, and it is not affiliated with any tour company.
What it reads
Three sources, and nothing that is not in them. The Municipality of Sami publishes the ticket prices and the opening hours as notices, several times a year, on its own page for the two caves; every price and every opening time on this site is taken from those notices and the page is linked as the source. The six listings publish their own inclusion and exclusion lists on the booking platform, and those lists are printed here line by line, so a tour that includes the cave tickets and a tour that leaves them to be paid on arrival are labelled as such. And the written reviews under each listing are quoted as their authors wrote them, checked against the listing at build time, for the detail people report: how long the queue was, whether the guide stood in it, whether the van reached the lake before the coaches.
The geology and the history come from the Kefalonia–Ithaca UNESCO Global Geopark, which lists Melissani as one of its geosites, and from the dated record: Petrocheilos in 1951, Marinatos in 1962, the tunnel in 1963. The bus times come from the KTEL Kefalonia timetable and carry its dates. Where sources disagree — the winter hours, the reduced combined ticket, when the roof fell in — the page says so rather than picking one.
What it will not do
It will not sell you the cave ticket itself: that is the municipality’s, sold at the entrance, and this site says which of the day tours include it in their price. It will not tell you a tour beats the queue when the listing itself says August is busy. It will not print a figure it cannot source: no temperature for the cave, no winter timetable, no age for the cave itself. And it will not print an exact price in its own prose: prices move, so the copy says “around forty euros” and the live figure is on the listing.
How it pays for itself
The tour cards and booking widgets link to GetYourGuide, which pays a commission on bookings made through them. The price you pay is the platform’s price either way, and the cave ticket is the municipality’s and has nothing to do with this site. The affiliate disclosure sets it out. Prices and hours change; if a page here is behind the municipality’s latest notice, the notice is right, and a note to contact gets it fixed.