Lefkada part 3 - The kayaking adventure!

---

And so it starts! The real adventure part of the holiday. It was another scorcher of a day with bright blue sky and sea. We arrived at the meeting point first, having checked out of Pirofani, and say hello to Alexis, the chief man at Trekking Hellas who are running the trip, Sakis, our main guide, and Spyros, his trusty sidekick.

The kayaks were lined up on the water’s edge being loaded with our camping gear and other essentials like water. Boy, were we going to need the water! Gradually the other happy campers arrived, and once we were all present we sat down for a yummy lunch and started getting to know each other over some yummy Mediterranean style nibbles.

We were quite a diverse group. Sian and I were the oldest, followed closely by Pam who had left her husband at home in Scotland and celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary on a Greek beach without him. The rest of group were much younger. Margaret lives in Cardiff and was travelling alone. Holly and Nathan were on their honeymoon, and reassured us that they’d had some ‘alone time’ before joining the trip. Neil and Mike are old school friends from Scotland. Douglas and Tiana are taking a sabbatical from work to do some travelling and to refocus their lives. Aimee and Rikki are friends and work colleagues on an adventure; funnily enough they both work in an optician like Tim (my kayaking coach in the UK) does. Nate is from the US but has now lives in Brussels and works for Toyota. Alex lives in Oxford and works in genetic engineering; he also worked on the Astra Zenica C19 vaccine!

Before the trip, Sian and I had asked for single kayaks after some advice from kayaking coach Tim. On reflection it probably wasn’t the most appropriate advice, but I’ll come back to that in a bit. Everyone else was paired up in double kayaks.

We all had a bit of a faff sorting out what we really needed to take with us for the 4 days on the water, put as little as possible into our dry bags and loaded our kayaks with our personal stuff before getting a briefing from Sakis and jumping into our kayaks. Everything we weren’t taking was loaded into a van and into Alexis’ safe keeping.

We had a gentle paddle across to the island of Madouri, then to the island of Skorpios where Jackie Kennedy was photographed naked in 1972. There was a ‘party boat’ on the beach when we arrived, and another one appeared shortly afterwards, so we didn’t stay long and paddled over to Red Rock Beach, an isolated beach on the west side of Lefkada, a little south of Nidri, only accessible from the water, and the venue for our first night of wild camping.

Alexis was there with a colleague, and was lighting the barbeque when we pulled our kayaks up onto the beach. The beach was stoney rather than sandy, but sheltered and warm. Most of us jumped into the water for a cool off, then sorted out which tent was our before sitting down to an absolutely delicious meal of fish cooked whole on the barbeque and salad. Rikki preferred meat to fish, so there was some pork provided for her, and vegan food was available for Holly and Nathan. All of us were sated, and there was some of the yummy local wine to wash the food down with. After clearing up, Alexis and his colleague paddled off into the now dark night, and after a bit of a group chat I headed to bed.

As we were wild camping there were no loo facilities. Sian and I identified a suitable place for night micturition, and Spyros showed us a private-ish place at the other end of the beach for anything else, providing a couple of loo rolls along with a small trowel for digging holes.

Surprisingly, sleep came quite quickly. We had yoga type mats as mattresses, and I put my sleeping bag on top of it for extra padding; it was warm enough that I didn’t need to get into the sleeping bag. We awoke after a bit of a restless night, had breakfast accompanied by some rather annoying wasps, broke camp, loaded the kayaks and off we went for day 2 of paddling.

Today was another hot day with a beautiful blue sky, and saw us paddling around the top of Meganissi (meaning ‘big island’), exploring some of the little inlets and having plenty of stops to cool off in the water.

We had lunch at Fanari Beach Bar, followed by an hour and a half to enjoy the water, beach and company. Some of the ‘youngsters’ went to play volley ball, while I sat and chatted over some coke zeros. I learned from Margaret that there is a Rebel Badge club. Wow! She described it as adult versions of the badges you get in guides, scouts etc. It sounded wonderful, and just the sort of thing I’d like to do, so I ordered book 1 for when I get home.

After a short paddle we arrived at Limonari Beach for night 2 of wild camping. The beach was covered in pebbles, sloping gently down to the clear warm water of the Ionian Sea, perfect to cool off after our paddling. There was a small café on the beach, and the café owners cooked our dinner for us before closing up. They also had a fridge full of beers, wine and cocktails, and quite a few euros were spent by some on stocking up for the night – not me! I did however have a couple of ciders that I had bought at an earlier stop. Sadly, no-one had a bottle opener! Thankfully Tiana knew how to open a bottle using another bottle! Who knew?! Every day’s a school day, and that was my new skill for the day.

Poor Sakis was feeling unwell with a fever, but with some persuasion took some parrots* and had an early night.

A local man had been fishing for his tea and arrived out of the water with an octopus in hand. He spent about 15 minutes bashing it on a rock, apparently to kill it as well as tenderise it. I get the tenderising thing, but surely there must have been a more humane way to kill it.

It was a bit of a late one for some peeps, with lots of giggles, laughter and chatting over a card game called Bullshit; somehow, I managed to win one of the two rounds I took part in. Sian and I turned in quite early, leaving the young ‘uns to their fun!

Despite there being a café here there was no loo. Being next to a large body of water was convenient for having a pee, but obvs not for anything else. We were informed that poo had to go into the human equivalent of a doggy poo bag, and be thrown into a special bin. Well so be it, once a suitable private spot had been found a little way along the road. I know some struggled though!

Day three was a hard day. Some had a bit of a slow start after their late night, although they denied having a hangover...hmmmm. I woke to see the sun rise over the mountains across the water – absolutely beautiful! Luckily Sakis was feeling a bit better today.

We set off on the longest stretch of paddling we were to do, 8.5km across fairly open water before stopping. This is where being in a double kayak would have really made a difference; it was a loooooong paddle to do on your own. We had our splash skirts on this time and they certainly don’t help keep you cool. I was one of the first to leave, and got into the paddling zone – splish, splosh, splish, splosh, splish, splosh – it was really quite hypnotic and meditative. After a while some of the other caught up, and their laughter and chatter snapped me out of the zone, but the paddling continued....

Eventually we headed around the point at the south end of Meganissi and stopped mid-water for a rest – rounding the point was the choppiest bit of water we had to negotiate, and thankfully all stayed safely in the kayaks. We were all pretty hot by now – the temperature was, like the previous days in the low 30 degrees centigrade, we did of course have buoyancy aids on, and hats – this was one of the times we were REALLY glad to have plenty of drinking water. I did take advantage of the coolness of the sea and soaked my hat before putting it back on my head.

We had a short stop in a small cave before heading north up the west side to Papanikolis Cave. This is the second largest sea cave in Greece, and is named after the Greek submarine Papanikolis which is said to have been hidden here for a while in WWII. There was an Earth Cache here which Margaret and I discussed between us and logged.

We pulled our kayaks up on to the small beach at the back of the cave, and jumped in the water for a cool off – it did feel cooler in the shelter of the cave than it had in the sun, and it was delightfully refreshing! There were large boats visiting the outside of the cave, and they caused some small waves to lap up onto the beach, almost dislodging one of the kayaks. Luckily, I spotted it and managed to get to it before it headed off across the cave and out to sea!

Sakis and Spyros sorted out another yummy lunch for us, and once that was eaten, we headed off on another longish paddle across to our camping area for the third night.

This was an established campsite in Rouda at the end of Rouda Cove, a long inlet on the south east end of Lefkada. To be fair it wasn’t really that long, but after all the paddling we’d done today it felt long. We ended up paddling around 20km today, approximately 12.5 miles, in blistering heat – we did good!

Although we’d spent plenty of time in sea water since leaving Nidri just over 48 hours ago we hadn’t had the privilege of a shower in fresh water, and I certainly had a bit of a salt crust going on. The campsite had showers and proper loos – divine! I think pretty much all of us took the opportunity to de-crust and take advantage of the facilities before sorting our tents out. Sian and I then took advantage of the hostelry just around the corner too, with Spyros joining us for a drink – such an interesting man!

The evening was spent eating and drinking at a local taverna. The food was delicious! And sooooo much of it. Loads of different sea food dishes, including squid stuffed with feta, mussels, and lots, lots more...

The morning arrived all too soon, and after a breakfast of omelette, bread and a few other tasty bits and pieces brought to us by Alexis we headed off for the last day of paddling. Our first stop was a small beach about half an hour along the coast from Rouda. Snorkelling took place, as well as jumping off cliffs and rocks into the water (not me!) and as always, lots of fun was had.

It wasn’t long until another stop in the Blue Caves, so called because the bioluminescence makes people look blue when they’re in the water. We had to duck our heads to get under the low entrance, but once we were inside it was certainly beautiful! Interestingly, lots of bats live in the cave and some of them had a bit of a flap around for us. Most of the group exited their kayaks to check out how they would look as a smurf... or maybe an Avatar; Sian and I stayed in our boats, personally because I didn’t fancy trying to get back in the kayak from the water; not a bad decision after watching some of the shenanigans.

We revisited Red Rock Beach for lunch, and this was one of my favourite meals of the trip – Dacos. Absolutely amazingly delicious, and I will definitely give it a go when I get home! The only downside was the wasps, who once again came out to annoy us.

I had noted that there was a cache on a beach about 600m further along the coast, so Spyros, Sian, Margaret & Pam, and I headed off a few minutes before the rest of the group to grab it. We managed to find it quite quickly, and were getting back in our kayaks as the others appeared round the corner.

The next hour or so was spent kayaking back to Nidri, arriving at the beach near Three Islands View Hotel around 16:00. Our kayaking was over! Mixed feelings from me. It had been a brilliant experience with a wonderful group, and a fabulous personal achievement, but I was glad we wouldn’t have to paddle again the next day.

We had a couple of hours to kill at the hotel before we headed out to dinner in town, so Sian and I had a quick dip in the hotel pool before putting on our glad rags. Alexis met us at the restaurant and a great meal was had by all, along with plenty of chat, laughs and fun.

Some of us moved onto a cocktail bar afterwards. I had a frozen mango daiquiri (delicious!), declined to be part of the tequila round, and looked on in amazement as a massive glass of frozen strawberry daiquiri arrived at the table – a gift from the cocktail bar - with about 10 straws in it. Knowing we had a reasonably early morning I wandered back to the hotel at about 11pm, leaving all the young ‘uns to have fun at the bar.

Giggles, screams and loud laughs woke me at around 3.30am as they all arrived back, finally going quiet at 4am. I thought they'd been dipping in the hotel pool. but it turned out that I'd heard them from the beach across the road. I'm certain others did too! There were a few sore heads in the morning, and I was really glad mine wasn’t.

Sian was continuing her travels, and planned to get an 8.15am bus back to Lefkada Town to get her coach for her onward journey. For an unknown reason the bus didn’t arrive, so she appeared back into the hotel and thankfully a taxi was sorted for her; she managed to catch her coach!

The rest of us, apart from Pam who had joined Sian in the taxi, clambered into a minibus for the journey to the airport. The very busy airport! Margaret and I both ventured through security and passport control, and spent some time on our feet as there were no free seats, chatting over a coffee about geocaching, the Rebel Badges and other exciting things. Her fli9ght was before mine, and I eventually managed to grab a seat next to a stroppy man who I ignored. The flight was delayed by an hour or so, but no problems once boarded, and I arrived home safely.

*Parrots eat ‘em all.

---

Photos

Barbeque on Red Rock Beach.
Photo by Spyros.

Red Rock beach.
The first night of wild camping.

Papanikolis Cave.
Photo by Spyros.

Sakis.
Photo by Spyros.

Spyros
I think a selfie!