To Porto Katsiki and the Cape of Lefkada

Today, too, we have a lot of blue-colored photos with lots of sea and sky. We go to Porto Katsiki, perhaps the most famous beach of Lefkada. Again a turquoise blue sea but this time the road to the beach is much better and there are more parking places (paid, though). Porto Katsiki means 'port of the goat' after the goats that used to climb on the rocks along the beach and were the only ones who could get to the beach. But that was at a time when few tourists came. Now it is a well-known beach and quite busy in the summer.

When we have parked the car and walk to the stairs leading to the beach, we see a Dutch fish stall in the parking lot. Probably a car that was written off in the Netherlands and now serves as a snack bar in Greece. There is a Greek behind the counter and he sells soft drinks and some snacks but no fish. Funny to see.

We only have to descend 80 steps to the beach which lies in a half bowl with high rocks as a back wall. Because of its location, the sun is only shining on a small part of the beach and for a quiet spot we end up in the shade. There are white pebbles and that also explains the beautiful color of the water in the reflecting sunlight. The sea is quickly deep and the waves have quite some power. By the way, it is not as busy as we expected.

But then a boat enters from afar and soon we see that it is completely packed with tourists, maybe hundreds of them. And yes, a little later the beach is a lot fuller and there are more boats coming. These are excursions that take you from beach to beach in one day and they stay in one place for about half an hour. What is particularly unfortunate is that loud music blares out of the boats' booths, ruining the atmosphere a bit for us.

After an hour we leave, it is much too touristy for us and it will take hours before we would lie in the sun, for that you can best come in the afternoon. But nice to have been on this beach, one that also appears in all kinds of most beautiful beaches lists. From above there are a few places from where you can make beautiful overview photos of the beach. For us it is in any case more fun to see it than to be there.

You can drive a bit further to the southern tip of Lefkada up to Cape Doukato, the Venetian name for the cape. Homer was already talking about the Lefkas Petri, the white rock from which the island also gets its name (lefkas=white). The place where in classical antiquity an Apollo temple stood, is now occupied by a lighthouse.
The coast towers 60 meters above the sea and according to legend, a jump from the rocks was a good remedy for heartbreak. The goddess Aphrodite was the first to try this, to cure her love for Adonis. Since she was a goddess, she survived the fall, but others were obviously not so happy, but were healed from any sadness anyway.

My favorite poet, Sappho, has also met her death here according to a myth. According to one story she jumped here after she was rejected by the much younger Phaon she was in love with. Another version is that Sappho had to jump as a punishment for adultery. Both stories are probably not true because in all likelihood Sappho died on Lesbos, the island where she was born, on the other side of Greece. But thanks to these legends the place has also been named Kavos tis Kyras, the Cape of the Lady.

Now that I am telling this, I realize that I have not written many historical things about the island, which I always like to do. For example, Lefkada could also be the island where Odysseus (another ancient Greek hero of mine) was king and not Ithaca that is a bit further south. But that is another story.
Homer described that passing the cape for ships was a horror, but from the land the view of the sea is beautiful and very suitable for taking pictures.

When we drive back north we find a beach near Kalamitsi where we were before. There we enjoy the peace, there is almost no human to see, much more pleasant to be than on the beach of Porto Katsiki. Again the sea is very rough and swimming is almost impossible to do, it is more like fighting against the waves. Fortunately, I also have a few nice books with me.