By Jean 4th June 2010 Today we were very excited to hear that the Mounda beach morning patrol had found lots of turtle activity from last night! There were three sets of tracks on the beach where turtles had crawled onto the beach looking for somewhere to nest, however for some unknown reason they returned to the sea without laying their eggs. The discovery of these three false crawls inspired our leader, Manuel, to schedule for night beach patrols to begin that very night. He asked for volunteers and several of the group were motivated to get started. Since Aaron and I had not had a particularly strenuous day we were well rested and were fortunate to be selected to be one of the two pairs patrolling the beach that night. Just before 10pm we walked down to the hotel on Mounda beach with Marcus and Ueil. The hotel marks where the beach is divided, with Potomakia on the East and Kaminia on the West. Tonight Aaron and I were patrolling Kaminia and Marcus and Ueil, Potomakia. This is w...

Thursday, June 17, 2010 Summer is upon Kefalonia. High temperatures have leaped into the low 30°s C (High 80°s F). Days are sunny and sticky while breezy nights offer cool respite. The mosquitoes show no mercy however. Before bed at the villa Jean and I have fallen into the habit of giving ourselves a good dousing of deet. We had a few departures at the the middle of the month. Helen flew to Amsterdam to meet up with her parents on holiday. Elina left for Finland with Sala, her adopted stray pup that a Dutch couple brought into the Environmental Center. Markus went back to Berlin to continue work of thesis. We also gained several new volunteers including Ellie from Cornwall who volunnteered for seven weeks last year, Jon from Oregon, Rhiannon from the UK, Sarah from Wisconsin and Vanessa, an Italian from Ireland with an American accent. Wrap your mind around that one. With the influx of volunteers Jean and I are looking forward to a slightly lighter schedule load. Since night pat...

KaMarkus is a recurrent volunteer at the Katelios Group and friend of Manu and Fiona's. For some time he and Manu have been talking about kayaking to Zakynthos, the island 14 miles or so to the south of Kefalonia. They were talking about it yesterday at the the potluck and I mentioned that I'd be keen on tagging along if they were okay with it. They were so just after six this morning we were on the beach. The day had broken calm and partly cloudy. Ripples of waves lapped lazily against the shore. It was a perfect day for taking a low profile open top kayak onto the open sea. As perfect as you could hope for anyway. Manu estimated that at 5 kilometers/hour we would make the cape 20 kilometers away in 4 hours. We paddled steadily cutting through the placid blue surface with occasional short breaks to bail out our foot wells. At the hour mark Manu informed us that according to his GPS unit we were averaging 4.6 kilometers/hour. Markus and I countered that we were...

Rain fell throughout the night but cleared in the early morning. I woke just after six to soft blue sky. It was probably the clearest it's been since we've been here as I could distinctly discern the undulating shape and mottled green and brown landscape of the island of Zakynthos south across the sea. Bree and I had morning patrol. Jean and Helen left with Manu to check out another nest beach west of Katelios called Korione. As we were still without rubbish back we would just do a patrol of the beach to look for turtle tracks. The Mounda Beach as it is called is 2.8 kilometer stretch of sandy beach. It's gentle slope, sand consistency make it ideal for loggerhead nesting as does the shallow shelf structure off shore. It is also not overly developed or traveled. On the morning patrol we're looking for any sign of nesting as the season usually begins in late May or early June. We didn't find any turtle tracks but we did manage to drag a very heavy, half buried ...

The rain continued throughout the morning yesterday and finally cleared around noon. Jean and I had been intending to do a bit of shopping as supplies were low but time was getting tight considering the siesta time starts around 2pm. I decided to try out one of the bikes parked on the side of the villa. There were two to choose from but they looked about the same. Both had rusted seat posts preventing me from raising them at all. The tires were inflated and the brakes seemed to be in working order which was good considering the the declines I would be traversing in the 3-4km to Katelios and back again. With my empty rucksack I headed out. The hill from the volunteer villa to the center of Ratzkali is a pretty good grade somewhere in the the 20-30° neighborhood. It's kind of like trying to cycle up Enchanted Rock . I quickly discovered that the gear shifting ability of my steed was lackluster. I made it about 100 meters up the hill and had to walk it the next 100 meters to where ...

Yesterday, we met up with Bree a little after 4pm to walk over to the center. The volunteer villa as I think I'm going to start calling it is not actually in Katelios. It's in another little village that I can't remember the name of, separated from Katelios by a good sized hill. We hiked up and over via a relatively wide two lane road overlooking the bay. The sun had come out but a steady breeze kept it cool. We arrived in the environmental center a quarter of an hour before five. It's a one room affair with a play scape out front. Inside there are various displays concerning the flora and fauna of the area. A preserved male and female loggerhead are the highlight of the displays. There was also a lot of good information. However, the majority of the pictures were faded and washed out. A British couple came in just after we opened. Manu arrived towards six and gave us a rundown and some history. The center had been an abandoned school house that the founders of the...

We arrived in Katelios yesterday evening after a 7 hour bus trip combined with a ferry across the Ionian Sea. The ferry arrived in the port of Poros on the island of Kefalonia at half past six. Steep green mountains rose dramatically up around the small town. After a few minutes our bus rolled out from the bowels of the immense white ferry. The driver got out started directing unloading for the passengers departing in Poros. During a lull I approached the gray haired gentleman, begged his pardon and in Greek, I said that we would like to go to Markopoulo. I had rehearsed the phrase for the better part of three quarters of an hour on the ferry, however his brow furrowed mystified and he hailed a bald, bearded man who spoke English. He relayed to the driver our intended destination and we were off. The road from Poros was steep and winding with many a blind turn. The hills were lush and green and dare I say again, dramatic. The bus trolled up the switch backs and through sleepy t...