Lefkas

Porto Katsiki 38.602779, 20.548889

Lefkas is a small island accessible from mainland Greece over a long causeway and a strange floating bridge which happened to be floating off down the river when we arrived to let some sailing boats out of the harbor. We made straight for the Island's Lidl and were dissapointed to find that it did not stock any fresh meat - presumably due to it's Island location. Meatballs were on offer for €1 however so we stocked up and will remember Sweden when we eat them, we've still got some Loganberries but unfortunately no Swedish gravy.

We were approached by some English people in the car park asking if we wanted a puppy, given the fresh meat situation we half considered it but decided that we would make do. It seems part of the ex-pat package here in Greece is to take on a stray or abandoned dog, of all the campers with dogs seems to have been rescued from here. The German lady on her own next to us had found herself a Corgi and we fostered a lovely abandoned Lhasa Apso and a frightened mixed breed dog for three days while at Parga feeding them biscuits and some ambient stored meat pate we bought for 20c but haven't quite gotten around to eating but we'd never consider taking one home.

We attacked the Island in an anti-clockwise direction using both our nose and some wild camping POI's we've collected from around the web. We stopped at the first spot for lunch but it didn't have the wow factor we wanted, so we continued. The most southern point was down a 12-mile dead end but we decided we would go and take a look.

As we arrived with a gaggle of tavana's a Greek guy rushed out to collect a parking fee from us pointing to the hand drawn sign made from some scrap wood. €3 an hour, €5 a day or €10 for 'overnight'. We're not sure if this is an official charge or one imposed out of season or when then the tourist police aren't looking but we handed over €3 and when he left an hour later thought nothing of staying the night overlooking the beach.

The location certainly had the wow factor (panorama at the top of the blog post) and our location overlooking the cliff was breath taking. Sophie has quite gotten into using her snorkel and spent over an hour swimming in the clear blue waters looking at all the different fish in the water. This is post card Greece at it's best and something we expected to have to take a boat to the likes of Corfu in order to experience.

After making a swift getaway in the morning to avoid the makeshift car park attendant we made our way around the rest of the Island stopping briefly in Syvota looking at all the salingholidays.com chartered boats which we learnt were on their way to Corfu where they spent the winter. There was also a boat from nearby Whitby back home called Razzle Dazzle and some lovely cafe's and shops selling the obligatory knock off Ray Bans.

The rest of the Island was pretty but we ended up back at Lefkada, the first town you come to after the floating bridge, where we spent the night overlooking the beach with three other vans.

Porto Katsiki GPS: (38.60291, 20.54924) - Amazing location on top of a cliff overlooking beautiful beach
Levkas GPS: (38.8460, 20.71712) - Parking next to the beach with easy access to Lefkada