Porto Katsiki

One of the many, countless reasons that every year drive droves of tourists to the island are its beaches with that Lefkada blue sea that dot the west coast.
One of the most famous, one of those where the blue reaches shades almost beyond the real is, among others, Porto Katsiki.

We could almost say that in Porto Katsiki the Blue begins.

This small cove sheltered by a very fragile wall so much to resemble chalk has the murkiest water imaginable.
Why so famous, you may ask. Well, that cloudy water is a frightening light blue/indigo/azul. Even swimming in it is an unusual experience.
In summer it is visited daily by hundreds of people.

The first time I arrived at Porto Katsiki was, as always, out of season.
The area is one of the wildest and most mystical of Lefkada: arriving from the capital you come to the famous junction with a dizzying view where keeping to the right you go down to Porto Katsiki, continuing straight you get to the lighthouse and the monastery of St. Nicholas.
We visited both that week, we were wandering around with our Gypsy determined to explore every corner of the island.
For us I mean me, Alina, our inseparable dogs: Bibi, Pepi and Tarallo, and Gypsy. Our camper van.
At that time Porto Katsiki still retained a semblance of happiness, the road down to the beach was in pretty bad shape, not that it’s better now, but at that time, about ten years ago, it was a bit narrower, with a few more holes and the inevitable stones that out of season crowd the roads of Lefkada.

oh…on that note…I’ll tell you an interesting anecdote.
You know, during the winter, or it would be better to say just after the season is over, Lefkada goes into hibernation.
In the true sense of the word.
As a bear lowers its body temperature to the limit of survival the island does the same with essential services and not.
Most of the restaurants and supermarkets are closed, hotels as well as medical facilities and small stores.
And even those who should take care of the cleaning of the streets or the ordinary maintenance of an island, for example, are vegetating.
I happened to walk along a number of the roads during the winter, and some of the boulders that collapsed during the last Mistral storm or after the last flood, you learn to recognize them. The color, the shape, the location.
Unless a landslide occupies the entire roadway, these boulders remain there until April or early May.
You see them so many times that eventually you get attached to them, you give them a name and you know they are there and you are ready to avoid them with your bike or your car and when they remove them you make that habitual movement to avoid something invisible for at least another week.
Once a neighbor of mine told me sadly “Fabio, they removed the turtle” referring to a huge boulder with that appearance that lived on the ioasseannou Karya Lefkada approximately at km 8,7 from October to April 2021.
It was quite a piece of rock…I think I should also have a picture of me sitting on it with my bike beside.
Anyway… back to the road that goes down between 47 hairpin bends towards Porto Katsiki….
Stones and rocks were at home there too, then something happened that made them disappear.
They were a nuisance to the cement mixers that every day unloaded their grey cargo along with the trailers loaded with bulldozer that disfigured one of the most beautiful and friable hills of the island.
When Alina and I drove down that road for the first time there were stones, in colorful piles.
When we got down there was only one parking lot, the historic one from which you overlook the beach and whereupon you take the narrow and spectacular footbridge over the rock that closes the bay.
We were alone that day.
Today it would be pure utopia even out of season to experience a moment of absolute solitude. It has now become a renowned meeting point for campers and globetrotters, but that day there were only two of us globetrotters, and our dogs.
We parked at the end of the square, as far as possible.
A fresh and caressing breeze was coming in from the northwest, a tired Mistral.
The scents were those classic of the west coast of Lefkada, so famous for its excellent honey.
The most sought after flower by the industrious bees is also one of the most beautiful and fragrant: the white thyme.
Porto Katsiki is one of those few places on the island where you can have that special pleasure of smelling the scent of white thyme mixed with saltiness. Needless to say, Spring is the best time for this particular olfactory experience.
It is since I became a Sommelier that I pay much more attention to single scents and to their hybrids.

Those who are fond of Scotch Whisky will understand me perfectly: distillates from Highland and Hebrides islands have totally different peaty scents, floral in the former and salty in the latter.
Here in honey you can find both of those scents.
They will never sell you white thyme honey, the few who have the patience to produce it are holding onto it. I’ve only tasted it twice, and it has an incredible flavor.
It’s almost like you can smell that confluence of scents among the well-known sweetness of one of the island’s most unique products.

We went down to Gypsy and stood there in absolute contemplation.
I even managed to isolate myself from the barking of my dogs who, as usual, started running like crazy in every direction, and how could I blame them?
If we poor humans with a limited sense of smell were inebriated by all this, imagine them smelling a million more scents… even though, in my personal opinion, the one that made their hair stand up was the smell of leather typical of wild goats.

On the other hand, Port Katsiki does not mean Port of Goats by chance….
Several dozen of them inhabit the island. Intrepid fugitives who have broken the bond with their shepherd, as well as the collar with that cowbell attached that betrays their presence.
I happened to see how: they were simply fighting each other and one goat succeded to make the collar of the other goat fly away with a horn… From death to freedom is an instant.
It was almost sunset, one of those ochre sunsets where Nefele enjoyed scattering lace in the sky .

Some moments restore your soul, the wind brings you memories from Italy and you are there, with the person you love most in the world in one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
We hugged and walked down the stairs.
Now the difference between up and down in Porto Katsiki is emblematic.
Many will hate me for what I’m about to write, but what I write is what I feel, and what I feel is almost always the truth. There is always a margin for error, but if Lefkada loves me one tenth as much as I love her, she wouldn’t lie to me.
Porto Katsiki just wanted to be left alone. Almost knowing what would happen to her in the next decade she almost tried to disappear in an earthquake and that night there she was sad, lonely and sad.
Not a puff of wind, not a movement of air, only the continuous and deep breath that attracted and repelled the wave of the sea, her only friend that by dint of caresses continues to console her even today.
There is a place on the beach where, if you are in the right mood, you can feel many beautiful sensations. A cave on the west side, where many tourists during the season just take pictures.
If you sit in there and listen, you learn a lot about the place, the island and the people who lived there.
And we learned a lot that evening, we went back up leaving the beach to its fragile solitude, returning to admire it from up there, from where it shows off all its incredible beauty.
Several years later, with the wonderful family of firiends, we spent an Easter there.
I knew the season would not be the best and so I used part of my annual sponsorship of wines that Tenuta Viglione never fails to give me to do something different.
I invented the Tenuta Viglione Cup.
Yes, I know I could have drained them myself, you might say, and as good as they are, I won’t hide the fact that I thought about it… but I like to share beautiful things.
So I invented this thing: a live broadcast a week from a surprise spot on the island. The first person to guess where I was would win a bottle of wine.
The beautiful Katia even won a couple of cases…. Just saying.
Actually, at least three bottles were won by her mother, who one Sunday said: I’ll do the next live broadcast there with him. And she really did!
They booked the ferry and after a week the next live broadcast, that of the Orthodox Easter, we did it together from Porto Katsiki!
….. that even on that occasion she was unpleasant and recalcitrant, in fact it seemed more like Christmas than Easter, almost as if she wanted to tell us, at least out of season, leave me alone.
But during the day something wonderful happened, the beach “recognized” us.
And accepted us as “official lovers of Lefkada”.
The wind calmed down, Nefele pulled away some clouds and Apollo, shy and half asleep, peeped up there in the sky, to the point that two members of the happy brigade took a bath….
In the morning we were with our comforters on!
The afternoon soaking in the Lefkada blue.

Today Porto Katsiki continues to crumble and to water the sea with that magical talcum powder that makes it a unique destination.
In its continuous struggle to survive, indomitable and stubborn, it continues to attract travelers who live there in winter and leave it to its sadness in summer, a season during which some indefinable humanoid has even dared to compare it to one of the most horrible, infamous and crowded Italian beaches that I will never name on these pages…. My God change island…. Porto Katsiki is not for you, but for those who respect it, for those who feel its breath, for those who hear its moaning and for the few, very few lucky ones who have seen its smile.

 

 

 

VIDEO PORTO KATSIKI