Day 15

From: Preveza

To: Vrachos Beach

Miles: 20

Total: 257

After a nice day off to rest our feet and breakfast in the hotel we were off again. We had great walking weather all day with abundant sunshine and no rain.

We reached our planned lunch stop town a bit early and it looked like nothing would be open. We noted on google maps there was a gas station at the outskirts of town and we have come to find out that they usually have a café with food in them. Luckily we were right. The gas station attendant made us a large hot pressed ham sandwich that we split. We also had a bag of small round corn puffs that we think had some type of peanut butter flavor in them, but we weren’t completely sure. The gas station attendant split her duties between feeding and talking to the locals in the café and running out and filling up the cars and trucks at the gas pumps. She was a busy young lady.

As we set off in the afternoon we endured long uphill climbs for much of the afternoon until we got close to the town we were spending the night. It was then that the fun began.

Google maps had us turning left off the main road onto a dirt road. We figured that was no problem since earlier in the day we went a couple of miles on a dirt road and then popped right back out onto the main road. Unfortunately this time that wasn’t the case. As we began walking down that road, it quickly turned into nothing more than a path for animals and started a steep decline. I slipped going down the path and John couldn’t see me because the weeds were so tall. A little further up a tree had fallen across the path that we had to get over and then drop down a few feet. By then we were definitely in just a washed out gully with lots of tall weeds. Finally after a couple of hundred more feet we could see the beach road below. We hopped on the beach road and walked along a cliff until we could overlook the beach and all the hotels below. It was really a pretty sight and we were looking forward to getting in our hotel. This is where the second adventure begins.

I checked online last night and three booking sites showed that our hotel was available. There was also a pizza place right next to the hotel so we thought it was all falling into place. As we started walking into town we noticed that nothing was open and nobody was in town. It was like walking through a ghost town. We started to get a little concerned. We did see one person fishing on the beach and two people on the balcony at apartments but that was it.

All the hotels along the beach as we walked along were closed and shuttered and the beach chairs and umbrellas were piled up. All the restaurants were closed as well. We finally got to our hotel at the end of the beach and it looked the same way. We checked the doors and it was locked and closed. Of course the pizza place next to it was closed too. Things weren’t looking too promising and we were thinking our sleeping bags on some of the lounge chairs from a closed hotel might be our bed for the night.

We did see a couple of cars at a small hotel next to the one we planned to stay so we decided to walk up and knock on the door. Once more we were lucky. A lady and her husband answered the door and said they had rooms for us. We were very happy. We asked if there was any place to eat, and she said she would fix us dinner. It was chicken schnitzel with french fries. It was really good! Unfortunately John doesn’t eat chicken so he just had both orders of french fries while I had the chicken, but we both ate the salad which was really good. The rooms are nothing to write home about but at least we have a bed and we eventually got our heaters in the room to work somewhat, so we are much better off than sleeping on the beach tonight. We are thankful to have found this place and to our hosts. I hope everyone had a great holiday back home today!