Santorini

26th- 29th June 2010

We arrived into stunning Santorini around 3pm, (after a stunning, problem free ferry ride, stopping at Naxos along the way) and we were met at port by the hotel owner who drove us and a couple of others the 20 minutes, up the side of the cliff, to the main town on the island, Fira where our hotel was. It was a beautiful little villa with pool less than a meter from our front door.

After we'd dropped our bags off we went for a quick walk through town and shops before grabbing a very late kebab lunch. We did a bit more wandering through main town of before deciding we needed some supplies from the supermarket. Whilst we were in the supermarket, I spotted a large box of 'Essex' brand washing powder and made Dan line up for a photo with it. It must've been then that I accidentally put the can of deodorant in my bag while fishing around for my camera. We only realised that I'd stolen the deodorant when we got back to the hotel. I felt horrible about doing it, and was even going to go back to pay, but at the same time it was quite nice, because we'd both been whinging at the cost of deodorant and toiletries in Greece in general. We decided to cool off in the pool before going over to the main part of the hotel to use their internet. As we were sitting there the lovely host woman bought us over to big glasses of local wine, which we gladly devoured. We went in search of a cheap restaurant for dinner, which was challenging, but we found a lovely little taverna with a rooftop terrace, no ocean views though, but with the most friendly guy running it. We opted for traditional food again; Saganaki followed by Moussaka for Dan, and I tried the Pastitsio (A macaroni pasta bake type dish). We thoroughly enjoyed the food and decided that we'd probably return there again.

Throughout our couple of days on Paros, and now in Santorini, we'd been heading about this 'General Strike' planned for the 29th June - the day we were due to catch the ferry back to Athens from Santorini. As it was going to be a general strike, it meant that EVERYONE was going to be off work, and there'd be no public transport running. It was a bit indefinite for us because we'd heard that the ferries from the islands would be running, but none would be leaving the Piraeus in Athens. We thought we should probably find out for sure so on our way home from dinner we called in at a ticket agency who told us it was too early to tell if they would run or not. We looked at other options - none would get us back to Athens in time for our 9am flight on to Brussels the following day. The only way we could ensure that we'd make it was if we changed to the midnight ferry the night before. I wasn't too keen on that idea. We decided to wait it out a little bit. Headed back to the hotel for some sleep.

We were a bit late getting organised the next morning, but we were out the door by about 11am. We had found the cheapest place to rent Quad Bikes the day before so we headed straight there. This time we opted for some more grunt, and got ourselves 125cc quad bikes. Luckily we already knew what we were doing with them, as the lesson we were given wasn't the greatest. We were also given a very sketchy map of the island, and we were on our way.

Within 10 minutes we were lost and doing laps of the airport on the island. We somehow managed to find our way down to a small town for a bit of a look around, before trying to find a way over to the 'red beach'. We took a road, which appeared to be ok, but found ourselves climbing up the biggest mountain on the island, which would've been ok had it not have been gravel. We eventually found our way around (By going back to Fira and starting again) and arrived at the Red Beach around 1pm. We parked our bikes and went for the 10-minute walk around to the highly populated red beach - so named because of the colour of the sand. The beach was amazing, surrounded by red/black volcanic cliffs, and with black pebbles and tiny grains of red sand, it was definitely unique. There were hundreds of people lining the shore, but Dan's eyes seemed attached to the group of 6, twenty year olds who were all sitting around chatting completely topless. Most of the European women we've seen who opt for topless are all old and fat, so I think Dan was a little shocked to see some perky boobs on the beach! We jumped straight in for a swim to cool off, and we splashed around with the kids for a bit, before getting out and drying off on the walk back up the cliffs to the quad bikes.

It was only a short ride on our bikes (Now that we knew where we were going) and we were back in the town of Perissa, another one of the bigger towns on the island, where it seemed most of the shops were shut up (It was Sunday!) We found a little bar type place that sold us a small Souvalaki and after we'd devoured that we were still hungry so we found ourselves a bakery. I had another feta pie, and Dan had something less tasty.The cakes looked amazing in there though - I regret not seeing the moussaka pie before I ordered. That looked good too.

After lunch we were back on the bikes for a few minutes and headed to the black beaches at Perivolo, just outside Perissa. The black sand stretched for miles, and the beach was filled with beach bars, cafés and restaurants. We found a vacant spot and set up for a bit more sun, before heading into the refreshingly cool water. I looked on enviously at the people parasailing up and down the beach, if only we could afford it…. We had decided that we'd better get ourselves out of the sun we if didn't want to end up as lobsters (We got quite burnt on the bikes in Paros) and we decided to head right up north to the picturesque town of Oia.

The ride up was fantastic. It took about 40 minutes (At Dan's pace) winding up around beautiful mountains with awesome views out over the Aegean Sea. Oi is the place where all the typical Santorini photos are taken; the white houses built into the side of the cliff, dotted with the little blue domed churches. It was just as amazing as the photos. Little narrow laneways run through all the shops and houses, and we just spent a couple of hours exploring the shops and the streets. We went into a couple of jewellery stores in the search of some earrings, and when I'd finally found a pair I liked we went in to pay for them and the lady struck up a great conversation with us. She was from Melbourne, who set off to catch up with some relatives over this way and she never returned. She set up her some business in Oia, and hasn't been back to Australia since!

We had initially planned to stay in Oi until the sun went down (Apparently the sunset views over the volcano are amazing) but by about 6pm we'd run out of things to do and were both a bit nervous about the mountainous drive back to Fira in the dark. We saddled up and headed back to Fira, where we dropped the bikes off back at the hotel and went for a nice long swim instead.

When we thought the sun was about 20 minutes off setting we headed up to a restaurant, which had a lovely terrace (this time with views over the volcano) ready for the sunset. We had eaten our entrées (Saganaki again, and also this time a local dish of tomato fritter type things) and our mains had come out, but the sun was still not that close to setting. Dan and I had to have a slow race, to see who could be the last person eating, just to make sure we were still up there when the sun went down without having to order more drinks or dessert!!

The sun did eventually go down, and it was amazing, but we decided that the terraced restaurant didn't provide the best views; we headed down to the path to the old port where we had a nice peaceful view of the sunset for about all of 3 minutes.

After checking in with another ticketing agency (Still no news) we headed back to the main part of the hotel for some Internet time (And more free wine) before heading back to our room for sleep.

Next morning after we'd fed ourselves breakfast we had to return our quad bikes. After they were safely back in the shop we headed up to a local ticketing place and booked ourselves onto a day excursion over to the volcano. While we there we asked if there was any updates on the ferry we were meant to catch the next day, or if we should jump on the one at midnight - still no answer, but if we asked them later in the day they MIGHT know more! We only had about 1.5 hours to kill before our trip started so we did a bit more window-shopping in Fira (I avoided the supermarket!) and grabbed a Souvalaki for lunch.

We made the journey down the 580 so steps, through the hundreds of donkeys, which line the path, down to the old port of Fira. We jumped onto our traditional sailing boat, and with about 30 others were on our way. The boat ride only took about 15 minutes to get out to the volcano, and we were shoved off the boat and out on the hot rocky ground. Thousands of years ago, Santorini and the other island nearby made up a big huge volcano. After a big eruption a lot of it sank underwater, but the rim or the caldera, is still underwater and that's what we were visiting. Have a look on Google maps at the shape of Santorini and the nearby island; you'll see that it almost makes a perfect circle!

Anyway, the 1.5km walk, straight uphill, on hot slippery volcanic rocks was tough work. We saw a number of different big craters along the way, but it wasn't until we reached the top that we could see the big, active one. There was a good stream of steam coming out and it was bloody hot up there. We had about an hour and a half to explore before making the trudge all the way back down to the boat.

The boat then took us around to the back of the volcano where we could enjoy a swim in the 'hot springs'. This meant that we needed to dive off the boat into the beautiful clear, cool water and swim for about 50m into a little cove. The water turned a murky brown colour and got slightly warmer, but after the thermal springs in Turkey, these were barely tepid. I enjoyed the water back closer to the boat so I went back and swum around there for a bit, before climbing my way back on the boat.

Once everyone had managed to get back on board the boat took us back to the old port. We again had 3 choices to get back up to Fira; Almost 600 stairs, a donkey ride, or the much more modern cable car. We chose the cable car and within 3 minutes we were back up at the top.

It was around 5pm when we got back into town, so we headed back to the hotel for a swim and some Internet time before venturing out for the night.

We decided that we'd go back to our favourite little taverna, we were the only guests tonight, and we got chatting with the same friendly host again. We were talking about how stuffed up Greece is with the strikes that are going on - not even the news was being broadcast. We told him about our ferry fears for the next day, and he thought it would be wise for us to take the midnight one. Anyway, while the chef was cooking our meals (Saganaki and tomato fritters followed by Pastitsio for Dan and awesome Calamari for me) he called the local Port Authority for us to see if he could get a clearer answer for us. They told him that they didn't have a clue what was going to happen tomorrow, and their recommendation to us was to get the midnight ferry. After our delicious meals and fare-welling our favourite host we set off back down to all our ferry agents that we'd seen over the last two days.

First stop, we went to the authorised ticket for the ferry company we had tickets for (Earlier in the day that he been positive that it was going to run) and they were still certain that it would set sail. Good. Next we went down to the other ticketing company where we bought our day trip. They said that at this stage only 2 ferries were going to leave Santorini tomorrow and ours was one of them, but he refused to say that it was DEFINITELY leave, as he said "Things can happen overnight!", finally we went back to the last place that we'd visited throughout the day and they said that they were "Pretty sure"it'll go.It was a pretty big gamble deciding to not take the midnight ferry, as the next ferry that would have left Santorini after the strike would not have made it back to Athens in time for us to get our flight out to Brussels and we would miss part of Werchter.

We were back at the hotel around 9.30, watched some soccer (though due to the strike there was no commentary), packed up and tried to get some sleep (I was worrying about it all a little bit and struggled getting some zzz's)

Next morning we were up and checked out of our hotel. The hosts drove us back down to the port where our ferry arrived right on schedule and sailed us the 7.5 hours all the way back to a deserted ferry port in Athens!!!!

When we got to Piraeus in Athens the easiest way back to our s***ty hotel would've been on the metro. Of course because of the national strike that was not an option. We were hounded by taxi drivers (who must have gone home that evening and bathed in cash) but we were determined to make the 10km trip for a much cheaper price. For some strange reason the buses had been operating in 2 hour windows and they were due to stop again at 7pm so after finding some tickets, getting the bus number we were meant to catch and a vague finger point in the direction of the stop, we set off. 45 minutes later we'd walked up to the bus stop and arrived just as the bus we needed pulled up. It was difficult to tell if it was going where we needed it to, deciphering the Greek Alphabet takes a lot of brainpower. My tiny bit of math's knowledge helped a bit, Dan was much more proficient in knowing the names of the letters and then putting together sounds to make a word. We got on the bus, and 45 minutes later we arrived at Syntagma Square - right where we needed to be - before a 20 minute walk down to the s***ty hotel again.

We've tried to have McDonalds in every country we've visited, but on our last night we decided that the food was too good to waste our last meal on McDonalds so we found another cheap restaurant in Monastriki and ordered up. We tried their special 'signature' dish - souvalakis made with minced beef and lamb all mixed in together. Amazing. We saved the best ones til last.

Bellies full, we headed back to the hotel for sleep, as we had to be up early for our flight to Brussels!