Skala Sikamineas Lesbos September 2015 Refugees coming ashore near the village of Skala Sikamineas on the northern tip of Lesbos after navigating the six-mile crossing from Turkey on inflatable rafts. After reaching the island, they have to walk 34 miles to Mytilini, the capital of Lesbos. Thousands of migrants have come ashore this summer on the Greek island of Lesbos, a popular tourist destination. The prime role of Lesbos as a migration route is largely an accident of geography. Turkey is so close that migrants have to cross as few as six miles of water to reach the island. And nearby Turkish shores are sparsely inhabited, making them ideal places for human traffickers to gather migrants and launch them in flimsy inflatable rafts. Between 2,000 and 3,500 migrants now reach the island daily, riding on about 100 inflatable rafts. The beaches are festooned with orange life jackets and deflated rafts abandoned by migrants who are choosing to take their first steps into Europe here, in ever-increasing numbers. A Turkish crackdown on smuggling elsewhere after the widely publicized drowning of a Syrian toddler two weeks ago have rerouted much of the Mediterranean’s human traffic though Lesbos, making it the single largest European recipient of new migrants.