Safe Return Doubtful

I’m sitting out Storm Apollo in the hill village of Karya, still on Lefkada island. It’s been a week of storms, interspersed with some fine warm days, but this is a big one, lasting about 15 hours, and named, with rain falling heavily as subsequent thunder showers today, Saturday, followed by wind tonight and tomorrow.

A storm drove us from our perch up at Cape Lefkas on Friday morning. My timing was poor. I blame it on the book I was reading, it was a case of ‘just another page’.. We got to the lighthouse on foot from the van just as the sky darkened and the thunder began, but still had a mile or so back to the van. A very wet mile. Steadily, with the lightning breaking everywhere around us, we made it in the van the few kilometres into Vasiliki, the resort at the far south of the island, and took shelter in a bakery cafe for an hour or so until it passed over. Places like Vasiliki are weird to be in during winter storms; its streets reminiscent of small rivers, signage offering beach merchandise and the odd left out beach chair blowing around the streets, and no people anywhere to be seen. Pretty much everywhere is closed, just the one bakery, a mini-supermarket and a fuel station open.

The sky cleared, the temperature recovered back up to 20C, and later in the morning we headed north up the serpentine tiny roads that run adjacent to the spine of the island, to the village of Karya.

I’ve taken a small cottage for four days which I found on the internet. It isn’t luxury, but it’s perfectly fine. The idea was that I would get some jobs done on the van, but today, it’s been too wet to do very much.

Being down on the coast doesn’t appeal to me at all. I suspected it wouldn’t, but that was soon confirmed after the couple of days at Desimi and Kathisma beaches. My interest here is in the mountain villages, regardless of season, and taking the opportunity to hike when the weather isn’t too wild. It’s dark at 5 pm now, which has the appearance of being earlier on a rainy day like today. If there are any self-catering lodgings open all year round the prices are usually extremely low at this time, and in the next few weeks I may well take the option of one or two of these.

Yesterday evening I took a wander around the village, which has a great setting, though isn’t as picturesque as those in the Kravara. It does have a supermarket and one open taverna though, and we called in for a Friday beer. I had thought that dogs would not be welcome indoors, but with the places so quiet, Roja is not just welcomed, but made a fuss of as well. He has been given the odd snack in the last few we’ve been in, so looks up in expectancy when the landlord passes now. And again, no surprise, he got lucky.

It’s one of those weekends when you don’t feel too guilty about watching sport and reading, as the thunder crashes overhead, the room is lit up by lightning and the window shutters crash shut. I tried to locate a gap in the storms this morning for a chance to get out, and was almost successful. But in these conditions, almost is no good. Within seconds a soaking has been delivered. We took refuge in the taverna we were in last night and got chatting to a couple of locals, but were back at the cottage for 2 pm.