Santorini

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As the ferry pulled into the huge secluded caldera of Santorini, I was dumbstruck. The island of Santorini is a huge ancient volcano where the middle has dropped and been exploded out (creating a caldera) and the sea had rushed in. What this means is that you have a couple mildly active volcanic islands in the middle of a huge bay, and this is surrounded by a broken ring of islands with huge cliff faces, upon the top of which sit several traditional whitewashed Greek towns! This just may be the most beautiful place I've ever seen!

Unfortunately, for me to stay in the interior area of the island would break my budget heavily, so I proceeded to head to the backpacker's area near the black sand beach of Perissa. Here, I spent many hours relaxing on the beach, partying and watching the World Cup over beers with the various international friends I had made. This was a great place to relax and wind down, and I made full use of it!

When I got tired of relaxing, a fun girl from PEI (Catherine) and I each rented a quad and booted about the island! We visited the caldera rim, where we took some really amazing pictures, visited several beaches (Red, Black and White sand included) and took a few dips in the ocean, and visited traditional settlements. Along the way, we noticed that the island has some very interesting agriculture, in that they have terraced many of the steep slopes and they grow low lying grape vines that we later learned are actually weaved into baskets to protect the grapes from the heavy winds! Towards the end of the day, we visited the town of Oia, which is famous for it's sunsets. Basically every flat spot on the west end of the town was covered with people taking in the uninterrupted view of the sun as it set over the Mediterranean.

The next day, we hopped on a boat to tour about the volcanically active interior islands. This was some of the most rugged terrain I've ever seen, with huge black basaltic boulders strewn everywhere, and a couple nice craters complete with fumaroles of volcanic gases! Afterwards, we swam in some thermal springs, gave our selves a stinky sulfurous mudbath and swam in the ocean.

The next, and last, stop on my "intinerary" is the Greek capital city of Athens. A little nervous about heading to a large city after spending over 3 weeks in small coastal towns and villages, but also excited to see the cultural center of Ancient Greece!

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