Back where I'm happiest again. Standing on the side of the road choking on exhaust fumes. Can't beat it.
Just a few lines to fill you in on the main events in camp Argostoli before moving on to what's happening now. I'll try my best to come back to it and fill in the blanks when I get the chance.
The last two weeks in Kefalonia were very, very busy, and with all my leader-type responsibilities in Argostoli I had very little free time, and I wasn't inclined to use that for writing. I know, it lacks commitment but that's the sad truth of the matter. To be honest, I don't know about the others, but when I was told that they had enough turtle activity on the beaches over on the west side of the island to justify sticking a group out there, I thought that it would be fairly relaxed, a track every other day, but mostly quiet. In short, I was expecting it to be a holiday compared to Katelios.
Wrong. Had nests and false crawls nearly every day for the first week I was there, which kept us busy, and on the 20th we had three false crawls and three possible nests, one of which had to be relocated because the silly turtle laid her eggs right beside the sunbeds, which, having a lot of foot traffic, isn't the best place.
Then as if things weren't hectic enough one of the girls had a bicycle accident, cycling off a ledge in the dark. So there were trips to hospital and all that. Thankfully she was alright, though, although it did make me wonder about the hospital system on the island.
Overall, though, I enjoyed the experience, and the guys and girls I was leading were a mature and reliable lot, so it made life a lot easier.
Anyway, left Kefalonia on the 30th. Took a bit of figuring out to get a ferry from Katelios. Most ferries run twice a day, except on Saturdays, which was enormously inconvenient seeing as how that was the day I was leaving, but we ('we' being the owners of the camping and I - but mostly them) found one that went to Lefkas (or Lefkada), an island to the north of Kefalonia that has a bridge to the mainland, at four in the afternoon, so had time to do a morning shift to the beaches and go for a snorkel in a huge cave at one of the beaches on my way back. Spent a bit longer than I'd meant out in the water, so was rushing to get everything packed and try to make sure that I'd given the new leaders all the information I could to make the change-over easier. Had meant to give myself at least three hours to get to the port but in the end it was more like two and a quarter, which turned out to be plenty, as this lovely family picked me up and were going to drop me halfway, but instead drove the extra twenty minutes out of their way to drop me at the port to make sure I got my ferry. And then they told me that they were on their way to a wedding, so I felt bad about that, especially as I had over an hour and a half to spare for my ferry, so I could easily have made it hitching.
Spent a good hour of the ferry journey repacking my bag more neatly, which cut down on one extra bag, so now I've only got my backpack, a small daysack and a satchel. Still a bit much, but it's manageable.
Ended the first evening of hitching at Monolithi beach, a really long stretch of sand with only one rock on the whole strand. The last couple I got a ride with were students of music, and when I told them I was Irish, they pulled a tin whistle out of nowhere and started waving it around. Very random, but apparently some friends had been in Ireland and brought it back for them. But they couldn't do anything with it. As we were approaching the tunnel that leads to Preveza, I told them that at home we try to see if we can hold our breath from end to end (I actually told them that it was supposed to be lucky, although I think I made that bit up). So we gave it a go. The girl, didn't make it that far, and myself and the guy, who happened to be driving, we going strong for a long time, but it's a very long tunnel, and so he put his foot down for the last two hundred metres or so. Less than two minutes out of the tunnel the police pulled us over and made us all get out of the car. Just as we were pulling in the girl simply said that they were just pulling us over to see if we had anything bad. That worried me slightly seeing as I'd only known this pair for all of ten minutes, and if their boot was full of cocaine I was pretty sure I was in deep trouble. I was also fairly certain that they were going to do us for speeding after the final stretch in the tunnel, and I felt awful, but it turned out that it was just a random search. They asked a lot of questions about me, demanded my passport, wanted to search my travel wallet. And went through both my small bags. When they got to my rucksack I was afraid that they were going to take everything out of it, which would have been bloody annoying after spending so long packing it, but they only took out a couple of things before giving up on us.
Got up early(ish) the following day and was on the road by about 07:30, and the first lift took me all the way to Igoumanitsa, which was where I was getting the ferry to Corfu to meet another friend from my time in Athens. Was on the 09:15 ferry, which was far better timing than anticipated, so it meant that I got to spend a lot longer with my friend and his wife, and that I didn't feel so bad about having to tear off early the following day. He and his wife drove me to the north of the island where we hung out on a beach for the day, before heading back to where he and a friend of his have begun their own organic farm. Originally it was just meant for their own families, but now they're growing enough to be thinking about selling them. I got the tour of the farm and helped tie up a few tomatoes before we got food from a taverna down the road.
By the end of the day I was exhausted. As I am now, in fact, so I'll have to leave this for now. But watch this space for the trip through Albania and more.
