Spectacular Santorini

---

Day 37

It is so hard to keep track of time and dates. Today is Monday, I think, and we are off to Crete this evening. About three hours by boat.
We have just spent the final two nights of our island hopping package on the famed Santorini. It truly is quite spectacularly amazing, with the towns perched precariously on the cliff tops. Today there are six cruise ships anchored in the bay below. One gets the impression if another shipped arrived and off-loaded say another 500 passengers into another 10 huge buses the whole show might overbalance and topple into the sea without another earthquake.

Being so famous, Santorini is therefore more popular and consequently more expensive. Our seven night package plus ferry tickets cost us 360 euros. We had no way of knowing at the time whether or not that would be fair value. In the end I would say that it definitely was. We chose it because August is the height of the tourist season, and in particular there are lots of students travelling and staying in all the cheap accommodation. Our places have varied, as we have described. I think the cute and very delightful place on Paros was about 25 euros a night The place here quotes itself as 160 euros a night! I assume our package received a discount. It seems that here if you walk in without a booking they charge you extra. I guess they know you have few other options.

Another good thing about the package was that in each new port were were met and transferred to our accomodation. In Santorini we are about 15 minutes out of town, near the east side of the island. The hotel bus brought us up the rather alarming zig zag road up the steep cliff side. The hotel actually has a beautiful swimming pool with cabana and lots of banana lounges around it. The Europeans of course love to sunbake, even in the noon day sun. Ten minutes walk away is a black sand beach. Neatly lined up with umbrellas and lounges , of course. It is a real performance.

Yesterday morning we set out with the intention of going to the famous Akrotiri archaeological site, a Minoan settlement , discovered after the volcanic eruption of 1866. Unfortunately it is currently closed, as not only was the chief archaeologist killed in a site accident but more recently a tourist was also killed. As a result the government has been tightening up on many activities. (Apparently a ferry sank drowning 80 off Paros a few years ago too. ) . So next plan...we took a tour out to the volcano on Nea Kameni, in the calder. We travelled in a beautiful old two-masted wooden fishing boat. We spent a couple of hours there, climbing the volcano. OUr guide assured us that seismological experts could reliably assure us that there was not to be an eruption in the near future! After that we went to a nearby island which is also uninhabited to swim in a hot spring and if we wished, apply mud to our faces. To Connie and me the best part was diving off the lower deck of the boat into the glorious deep blue water of the Aegean. Fantastic. We obliged by swimming across to the hot spring..warm, brown and smelly. And pass on the mud. Another cultural difference. The Europeans seem obsessed by hot springs. Good for you !!!??? Then on to our third island for the day, Thirasia, where we had lunch on the beach. This is one of the least developed of the Greek islands. No vehicles. You could walk up to the village on the cliff top or ride a donkey. I do not even enjoy riding my cousin's pet horse in a level Australian paddock so I passed on that opportunity.

Today we set off in to the "capital" Fira on the very crowded local bus, only to discover that the key two archaeological museums are closed on Mondays. Of course we were not really aware of what day of the week it was. But yet again, the moral is to read our guide books with more care. So we got to wander along the main tourist thoroughfare along the clifftops. Very expensive I had an espresso and fruit salad ( (with spectacular view!) for 10 euros! When we reached the end of the tourist drag we came back along the main roadway. Charmless. Jam packed with tourist shops mainly hiring cars, motor scooters and quad bikes. Very little room for pedestrians. So now we are filling in time waiting for our 5.45pm ferry to Crete.

Despite the huge variety of tourists, cruise passengers ( a big Russian ship yesterday!) and backpackers, the predominant groups where ever we go or stay or eat seem to be mainland Greeks. The tourist industry seems to be supplemented by various imported staff. On Naxos the van driver who transported guests to and from the ferry was Armenian. At the current place the girl making snacks in the cabana is from Adelaide. The owner's son is married to an unsmiling Polish woman. I don't know how the Greek mummas like their favourite sons marrying these foreign women. In Naxos, our favourite restaurant the owner (age 30-40) was married to a German woman. They also have a three year old. The woman has been coming here for 11 years. I imagine from the former East Germany. Even in PAros, the travel agent was an Irish woman married to a Greek. Living here 18 years. Two sons in high school. It is easy to imagine why women from colder, poorer places might like to come here and work. And I am rather inclined to say that many Greek men are quite charming . But by anyone's standards it must be a strange life in the long term....madly touristic for half the year and then not much to do but recover and gear up for the next onslaught. I fear that Santorini is at is maximum capacity for tourists and that the logistics need to be re-thought in the near future.

---

Photos

Lobster lunch
Beachtop restaurant on Thirasia across the caldera from Santorini.

Thirasia beach
We swam right here between the restaurants in glorious clear ble water.

View from the main "street " of Fira,
looking across the caldera to the islands and volcano we visited yesterday.