Less is more

The past nights on the bus were marked by tropical heat and nasty mosquito attacks. However, in the morning, our private beach awaited us. Not a soul in sight. That was probably because our beach, a collection of sharp-edged and pointed stones, couldn't compete with the fine sandy counterpart 100m away. Equipped with extremely stylish Croatian rubber shoes, my inflatable sofa, and a throwaway beach tent, we headed to the beach in the morning.

Once we arrived, we set up the beach tent, inflated the sofa after some wrestling with the air, put on the rubber sandals, and off we went into the wonderfully tempered Ionian Sea.

When we crawled back onto the land, we noticed that something was different. The sofa had lost half of its air in just 5 minutes (multiple holes from stones ;)) and the beach tent was no longer recognizable as such. It looked more like a closed oyster (broken frame). Considering the care and dedication with which I chose all the travel gadgets, and the amount of mockery and ridicule I received for it, the result was really disappointing (@Niels, good thing I can't see your mocking grin now) and it dawned on me in that moment that sometimes less is actually more.

Anyway, after two relaxing days in northern Greece, we decided to continue our trip southward.

A longer stretch lay ahead of us along the west coast of Greece, with beautiful coastal sections between Igouminitsa and Preveza, with impressive marsh landscapes in the northern part and extremely steep cliffs and sandy little coves with turquoise sea along the southern section.

Magical! That's what makes a road trip so enticing. To our relief, it got cooler as we headed south. (If you can call 32 degrees 'cool'.) and we reached our destination in the early afternoon after a spectacular crossing over the Patras suspension bridge. Our home for the next few days would be the Palouki campsite on the west coast of the Peloponnese. A step closer to home. But more on that soon...