Every trip has a moment that becomes the one you remember most. For this one it was a table in Preveza, Papoutsakia, Greek salad and people who between them had served in Somalia, sailed the Ionian and cooked the meal. Before that there was a cargo ship, a pilot boat, a Gaza march on the harbour front and a very good fish taverna in a bougainvillea-shaded alley. This is how the Ionian Bound series ends.
After Zalongo, the day was far from over. Ioannis had arranged a meeting with a former presidential guard beneath a remarkable plane tree beside the Bridge of Arta. Then came the bridge itself, lunch on the lagoon at Koronissia, and the vast archaeological site of Ancient Nicopolis. A day that covered Roman triumphs, folk legends, Early Christian mosaics and a Stoic philosopher, all in the company of people who know this region better than any guidebook.
The Dance of Zalongo had been on my list for years. Getting there involved 410 steps, a long-standing battle with vertigo and a friend who would have called me something unrepeatable if I had tried to back out. What happened at the top was not what I had prepared myself for. Not the climb, not the monument, and certainly not the moment when two people began to sing.
Some days of travel arrange themselves neatly around a guidebook itinerary. Others are shaped entirely by someone who knows the place better than any guidebook could. Our friend Ioannis from Epirus Traveller took us from Preveza into the mountains of Tzoumerka for a day that covered a Roman aqueduct, a wax museum unlike anything I have seen before, a monastery built into a cliff face, a village of silversmiths, and a stone bridge over a turquoise river. I am not good with bridges. I crossed it anyway.
