Days 26 & 27

Sarande, Albania to Igoumenitsa, Greece.

The Greek border was not far away and would take us about 1.5 hours. It was a lovely day and the drive took us through some beautiful verdant landscapes, once again another very pretty part of Albania.

Reaching the Albanian border post we had our green card checked and then were quickly dismissed onwards to the Greek side. For some reason we thought this too would be quick, but it wasn’t . Firstly, you have to park up, get out of the car and take your passports and paper work to a row of windows where the officials sit.

There’s no queueing system, so you have to stand your ground to keep your spot. As I’m travelling on my new Irish passport, I’m pretty much ignored but for some reason, the border officer was pretty sure Gareth had gone over his 90 days allowance.

They were the longest 15 minutes of the trip so far . He was asked a number of times when he had been in Spain and when he had left the UK. Eventually, after consulting his colleague, they found the entry stamp from the tunnel and so allowed Gareth entry. Phew .

We were then supposed to present ourselves at the customs window, but as our van was blocking the way, a policeman just waved us on, one extreme to the other .

Welcome to country No.10 on this trip!

It does sound strange but I am sure the weather was warmer already . Well, Greece is practically spelt ‘sunshine’ isn’t it? How funny, coming out of the border check, we both mentioned to each other how we felt we were back on familiar ground.

The rocky terrain was at times, breathtaking. Hills dropping down to glorious turquoise water, cows on hills where only mountain goats should be and for the most part, good road surfaces, all with a glorious sun shining.

Looking at the beautiful sea and islands, you could almost hear Greek music .

We were heading to the other side of Igoumenitsa, and the drive took us right past the ferry port where you can travel to different islands in Greece or even to Italy – which is our plan on our return.

The campsite (Camping Kalamari) is a little isolated but is right on a shingle and sandy beach and some of the parking spots are directly in front of it. We chose a spot on the 2nd terrace, still just a minutes walk to the beach.

What a fabulous spot, a perfect Greek campsite. The water (which we paddled in) was lovely and clear but still April temperatures , though the sun was nice and hot. Ahhhh perfect .

We met a young couple from the UK (Jody and Leon) whose route we have sort of followed to get here, just a day or so behind them. They are out for a year and have two gorgeous little Jack Russel dogs, Bruce and Milo who Meg loved playing with. They had the same colouring as her too .

Bruce, the younger of the two, should be called ‘fearless’ because he’ll have a go at anything, is a swimmer! Wow, what a clever little dog. But what was absolutely bloody brilliant was that he swam to get Meg’s ball when it went in too far for her, which gave her the confidence to go a little further. So, she ended up swimming too , that’s the first time.

There’s a little restaurant on the site, all run by the same family and we decided to eat there on our first night. It was soooo nice to be ordering Greek food, I had the braised meat with chips and Gareth had stuffed vegetables, accompanied by tzatziki, bread, Greek salad and broad beans. Yum yum. Oh yes and a chilled carafe of house red wine.

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Day 27 Rest day in Igoumenista

Yesterday, Gareth had to do some work so I took Meg for a walk. The beach isn’t very long so we went up the hill and out of the campsite. Google showed a beach bar further along the main road so we headed for it. There’s no footpath and the vehicles really speed along this stretch of road so we took our time and stopped whenever a car was coming towards us.

It was quite a long walk down to the bar, and for some reason the windy access road had a huge rope running down the length of it . When we reached the bottom you could tell the bar wasn’t open yet for the season as the sunbeds and everything were still packed away. Oh well, no worries, I thought, we’ll just get some pics of the beach and go back to the van.

Haha, just my flipping luck, walked out onto the beach, big smile on my face because of the lovely view, got my phone out to take some pictures, turned my head to the right and there was a naked swimmer drying himself . I quickly turned my head to the left, thinking, hasty exit required, but Meg had chosen that very moment to go to the toilet! I scrabbled for a bag, picked it up and walked quickly away back out onto the access road.

Gareth wondered why we were back so soon and had a good laugh when I told him about the mullet haired local . I randomly named him Niko, told our English neighbours the story, who thought I meant Niko, the young lad working on our campsite thank goodness we eventually cleared that up!

We spent the afternoon with Jody and Leon and the dogs on the beach, chatting about all things, though mostly about travelling and the vans. We joined them for an alfresco dinner and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening .

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