Rotten luck with the hosting game: upon stopping for morning coffee in Preveza, we check our email and discover that our would-be host messaged us at 2200, a full two hours after we gave up on waiting. Such is life; we can hardly complain, not when our seaside park perch is passably comfortable - enough so that we wake up at 0730 without any prompting from our alarm, which is still set for 0830 from our hotel stay in Igoumenitsa. The fig trees have been barren for some time, enough that the shock at seeing their branches empty has at last worn off. Our plan is simple, unambitious even: get out of Preveza, pass through Lefkada, traverse the island to Vasiliki, take the ferry to Sami and thence to Killini on the mainland. This plan is complicated by my illness, which has chosen today of all days to reach a head. It is not exactly pleasant to be forced to, er, relieve oneself by the roadside every 5 km, but there is no alternative - for this reason, toilet paper makes the list of crucial items to bring on any sort of extended trip. But enough of such lurid details...
...Preveza is separated from Aktio (on the opposite side of the bay) by a 1600 m stretch of tunnel. Simple enough for us, except that the end at Preveza is strictly guarded by a cluster of police cruisers, and the tunnel itself seems to be patrolled by a road maintenance vehicle with two road workers inside who politely but firmly inform us that no, we may not cycle the length of the tunnel. Never mind that we've done worse - longer tunnels, less well-lit tunnels, highways and back roads and all manner of pavement by the feeble light of our headlamp. The alternate route is daunting: 100 km around the bay through Arta. Although it would undoubtedly be quite scenic, everywhere around here is scenic - and we have designs on getting to Kalamata, where a friend of a friend has offered to host us. Faced with this, we instead try the police; in broken English, they tell us what we already know - that the only other way is the long circumnavigation of the bay - but we put enough worry, disgust, and weariness into our resulting expressions that they offer to let us wait with them until a sufficiently large vehicle drives by. When several such vehicles pass by without stopping, they instead have us load our bikes on the road maintenance vehicle...
...and we are soon bolting down the tunnel way faster than we could ever hope to bike it, bursting back into the light just before the toll booths. We reach into our pockets, but no money is needed - we are travelling courtesy of the road service, and road service vehicles are understandably granted free passage even when carrying two semi-sketchy-looking travellers. We offload the bikes, remarking to ourselves that we seem to be doing less cycling than hitchhiking (hitchbiking?) these days...
...the road to Lefkada is not particularly notable: flatter than most, though not without hills; usual set of large hills and mountains at one side, sea at the other. There is an amusing sign by the military base halfway down the road informing passersby that photography is strictly "forbitten" - though exactly what information such photographs would reveal that is not already available through Google Maps satellite images or other such expedients, we are not sure. Just before Lefkada, the road flattens out through the marsh area; it is set lower than the Albanian roads, and we wonder if perhaps it would have flooded over during the recent storms, disconnecting Lefkada entirely from the mainland. Not unthinkable, not with what we saw of the sea further north...
...and we are soon along the side of the island down towards Vasiliki. This road starts out with rolling hills, but the last leg into Vasiliki starts off with a long and tiring uphill. To make matters worse, calamity strikes just before we head up into the mountains by Vasiliki: during a now-routine "stomach relief" stop, my bike falls over. This is not in itself of note - but this time it exposes a latent structural weakness in my pannier rack, which shears just above the mount point on the right side. I don't even notice this until I start to ride. There is an unsettling wobbling to the bike that I at first attribute to poor weight distribution - but then I look down and see that the rack itself is wobbling. We stop, pull everything off, set the two parts of the hollow metal rod in place with a thin stick, duct-tape the area as much as possible, and apply the top half of a broken spork as a splint. This is just enough to hold it together until...
...on the beginning of the descent into Vasiliki, we come across a petrol station and decide to stop for more, er, relief. There is a woman sitting outside, so we decide to see if she knows anything about the ferries in Vasiliki - but she is actually a Greek-Canadian from Montreal visiting her original home for a couple of weeks, and she does not have occasion to use the ferry there. Strange to find so many Canadians in Greece, although it is evident to anyone who walks through the Danforth in Toronto that there is a fairly large Greek-Canadian community. We explain our trip to her; like most people we talk to about this, she thinks we are quite crazy but is willing to extend her best wishes for our continued safety and success. But there is more to achieve here than conversation - given the instability of the rack, it seems best to remove the side panniers. These we construct knapsacks out of using the rope; one pannier apiece carried on the back, at least until we reach Kalamata and hopefully locate a decent bike shop. If not, we may even be in this sorry state for the rest of the trip...
...and we roll into Vasiliki in time to read the schedule and find that the ferry left at 0900. There is little for it but to wait; we scope out a reasonable campsite against a café that is closed for the off-season, then head back into town to grab drinks and charge the laptop and write blog posts. It is getting dark earlier each day, so we download more movies and resort even to downloading some old adventure game classics for DOS and SCUMM - something in keeping with the adventurous spirit of the trip. We grab a quick bite from the supermarket, decide this is not enough, and follow it up with souvlaki and tzatziki from a local snack bar before retiring to our chosen site to set up the tent and sleep. Nothing else to do; perhaps tomorrow will bring better luck in getting to Killini...