A Greek Odyssey (Part 2)


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September 1st 2010
Published: January 9th 2011
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Church BellsChurch BellsChurch Bells

I'm pretty sure I've seen this picture on many a Greek postcard...
Pulling into Santorini by boat is a spectacular sight.
With the white-painted towns built into the dramatic and steep brown cliffs, it evoked memories of the Cinque Terre.
The old port is right at the bottom of one of these cliffs and Kyriaki tells us that there are only three ways to get to the town of Fira at the top - by cable car, by foot, or by donkey.
We all take the easiest option first time around as we headed up for Kyriaki's tour of Fira.
The view at the top is absolutely stunning.
Originally a volcano, it erupted some 3600 years ago in what is one of the biggest volcano eruptions ever recorded. The eruption caused the volcano to sink into the sea, leaving only the crescent-shaped island of Santorini. The cliff-top view looking across the giant caldera that the eruption left in it's wake, is an awesome sight.
Fira itself is slightly different to the other Greek towns we had been to in Naxos and Iraklia, in that that it is a lot more touristy and blinged up - there are jewellery shops here selling Rolexes and shit.

We were to spend two nights here as opposed
Greek DomeGreek DomeGreek Dome

Classic church dome in Oia.
to the usual one night, so one of Kyriaki's suggestions was to hire quad-bikes for 24 hours to explore the island. We all agreed it was a fantastic idea, so off we went.
Santorini isn't the biggest island - our convoy of eight quad bikes managed to reach the town of Oia in about forty minutes, with the quad bikes going no faster than about 50km/h. Having not driven a quad bike before, it felt just like riding a snowmobile. Just a shame it couldn't reverse.
It was loads of fun and the breathtaking cliff-side views of the ocean on the way to Oia certainly helped. It's always great to do activities that are a bit different when on holiday, and this was no exception.
Oia was beautiful. The town's setting on the cliffs is probably what makes it, but this was definitely the cute, white-painted, blue-trimmed, narrow-street-ed, Greek Island town that you see on all the postcards. There are ordinary houses and some rather more luxurious ones built into the cliffs here, but there are no blinged-up jewellery shops here or anything of the like, allowing Oia to keep a really authentic feel to it.
We find a small
SilhouettesSilhouettesSilhouettes

Gkee, Davies, Robyn and Loren in front of the Oia sunset.
bench on a path overlooking the caldera to settle into and wait for the sunset. Looking over at the lookout, there are hundreds of tourists on it and it's absolutely spilling over. Enjoying some beer, ice-cream and a huge chunk of salami, the small pockets of space around us slowly start to fill up with sunset watchers, including a dog that decides to lick the top of Robyn's beer bottle. Jokes and funny poses get shared around our crew before the gorgeous sunset finally arrives.

After the sunset, there is an almighty scramble of cars, pedestrians, buses and quad bikes as seemingly everyone on the island makes their way back from Oia to Fira. Some quad bikes are more powerful than others and I manage to race ahead of the others as darkness starts to fall. Allowing the convoy to catch up, Aaron and Ruth's quad bike struggles to make it up a small hill at one point, holding us and a mile of traffic behind us up. For some reason the journey back always feels shorter than the journey there and before we knew it, we were back in Fira.
The small island roads weren't built for all
Red BeachRed BeachRed Beach

Looks spectacular but was in fact pretty average.
this traffic and trying to negotiate our bikes through traffic jam was quite stressful. There was no way we were going to find a place to park all eight of our quad bikes, so we agreed to all try and find our own parks and meet back in an agreed spot.
Eventually we all manage to meet up again - Loren and Robyn then pop off to have a romantic dinner for two, while the rest of us headed back to the boat for a shower.
Being one of most renown and beautiful Greek Islands, Santorini is an extremely popular destination with tourists and arriving at the cable car, this was in full evidence as the line was massive. There must've been a couple of hundred people waiting to get down and we got word that the wait would be 45 minutes long. By foot it is then.
The problem was, the path down to the old port was the same path used by the donkeys - meaning the steps were infested with donkey piss 'n shit. With very little lighting, we literally couldn't see shit. It took us a good twenty minutes to get down Donkey Shit Hill -
Door To The SeaDoor To The SeaDoor To The Sea

A nice picture frame.
heaven knows how long it will take us when we have to drunkenly stumble back down it again later tonight, when the cable car closes.

Although there was a huge queue coming down, the same couldn't be said of the cable car going back up as we just rocked on up.
After grabbing a quick gyros, we headed to Town Club, where tonight's drinks and partying would take place.
When we arrived, we noticed that a few of our tour group were missing - some people on the boat had managed to pick up food poisoning (including John in Iraklia the previous night) and it was spreading.
Nevertheless we got the drinking under way - starting with what else but Long Island Ice Teas. The boys were ripping through them at a furious pace - they were basically sculling them.
Splitting my time between talking to people on the back patio and on the dancefloor, the drinks eventually caught up on me, the music started to sound better and the place started to fill up.
People from our group started dancing on the bar, and we all soon each did our shift up there.
Out of nowhere, Robyn approaches
Shirtless MayhemShirtless MayhemShirtless Mayhem

John and Adam do their shift dancing on the bar.
me with a look of mischief and intent in her eyes. She starts to unbutton my shirt. By the second button, she can't resist anymore and rips my buttons off completely...making off with my shirt.
However I am but only her first victim. Soon every guy from the Viking Star has their shirt off. As we made up most of the numbers inside the club, it looked as if we had arrived in Mykonos a few days early. Soon other male patrons not part of our group were removing their shirts as if it was some sort of rule of the club.
Shirtless dancing on the bar = lots of incriminating photographs.
A decision was then made to leave and make our treacherous way down Donkey Shit Hill. It was an inauspicious start - Adam attempted to give Robyn a "donkey ride" down the hill but just ended up looking like a complete 'ass' as he stumbled on the rocky path and fell over, taking Robyn down with him. The end result was a graze on Robyn's ass. Asses all round on Donkey Shit Hill.
About halfway down, I then spotted something long and skinny wriggling along the path.
"Hey
Dancing On The BarDancing On The BarDancing On The Bar

Adam, Dania and Loren.
it's a snake!" I shouted, pointing it out.
Adam then chases after it, attempting to pick it up - which he eventually manages to do. Holding the snake by the tail in front of him, he seems oblivious to the fact that it could possibly bite him. The snake suddenly lunges it's head towards Adam, causing him to drop it with a shriek.
Walking down the Donkey Shit Hill with us were Dania, Nabila and Nadia who were actually with us in Athens on our final night there. When we got to the bottom, Dania decided she wanted to go for a swim in the port, and duly obliged. In what was turning out to be an eventful night for him, Adam decided to join her.
"The water tastes like petrol!" exclaimed Dania, as John hauled Adam out of the water.
A memorable night indeed.

The next day we were all to pick up our quad bikes in Fira and set out for the Red Beach.
However, to get up to Fira we would use the final mode of transport that we had not used yet - donkey.
These poor donkeys. You could tell they really didn't want to
Sags & AlejandroSags & AlejandroSags & Alejandro

Sags meets his donkey for the first time.
be there. They looked hot, tired and miserable. Like some of the service workers I have encountered in Greece.
It's still a quintessential Santorini experience though and so on we hopped. Sags christened his donkey 'Alejandro'. I christened mine 'Emile '.
On the way up it seemed clear that Alejandro and Emile didn't like each other as they both repeatedly cut each other off on the turns. Other donkeys seemed to take out their job dissatisfaction out on their cargo - a lot of donkeys would run really close to the walls and rocks, scraping their rider's leg along them. Some would simply stop - passenger on-board - to have piss or a shit.
Emile would often speed up to breakneck speeds like a taxi driver trying to get rid of his passengers as quickly as possible, sneaking into the little gaps between donkeys, recklessly weaving his way through traffic.
A lot of people seemed to be laughing at me because I was wearing my quad-bike helmet - I had to because I had nowhere else to put it and I needed two hands on the reins - but in hindsight I think it may have been a clever ploy,
Quad BikesQuad BikesQuad Bikes

Sags, Gkee and Adam - the fact Sags's helmet matches his bike is awesome.
because it would be so easy for any of these pissed-off donkeys to throw you off it's back and off the cliff.
In any case, it was a rather amusing and enjoyable ride.

Famously set against steep red cliffs of volcanic rock, the famous Red Beach is another awesome sight and looked like something you'd find on Mars. The beach itself is quite small however and there is only about fifteen metres between the cliff and the sea so it was very narrow too. The sand in the water is black, almost like mud and the surface under the water is rocky and unkind to your feet. So while it's a spectacular sight, the beach experience itself wasn't really that great. There were a couple of girls walking around with their boobs out too and I think they knew full well that we were all ogling their tits.
As the Red Beach was popular and crowded, we didn't linger long and made our way to another beach, Perissa.
We pretty much just parked our bikes at the beach and rocked up to a beachside restaurant to have some lunch. Enjoying some great food at a great beach with some
PerissaPerissaPerissa

The beach where we enjoyed a great Greek lunch.
great company - life was well, great!
I tried some local delicacies for lunch - stuffed vine leaves, fava (a hot, lentil-like porridge thing) and a Santorini salad (similar to a Greek salad but with peppers and olives).
Although not as spectacular looking, Perissa was a much nicer, black sand beach. The water was cleaner and a great temperature with smooth lava rather sharp rocks greeting your feet when you entered the water. Also greeting your feet, was some sort of eel! I definitely felt something constantly brushing my feet in the water and I wasn't going to hang around to find out what it was.
Walking back to where we had parked our bikes, we suddenly realised they were gone! WTF? It turned out they had been moved across the road so that some dude could setup a stall selling seashells or some shit. OK, then.
We then had one last hoon on our quad bikes before returning them, overtaking each other and generally wreaking havoc on the Santorini highways - they were awesome fun and great way to see the island.
And that was the last thing I would do on Santorini. It is one of the most
The Old Port By NightThe Old Port By NightThe Old Port By Night

View from the boat.
stunning places I have ever seen and definitely lives up to the hype. I guess it also helps to have some great memories to take away from the place...

That night was the "Captain's Dinner" on-board the boat - although it seemed the captain had better things to do than attend his own dinner.
The dinner was nice - a Greek buffet that included stuffed vine leaves, souvlaki, tzatiki, tarmasalata, and meatballs. Not that the food was bad, but the highlight had to be the biggest, sweetest and juiciest peaches that they served at the end. The constant hangover and the constant heat more than halved my appetite and made eating a real chore - but tonight I was approaching somewhere near my normal capacity.
The post-dinner entertainment for the night was Greek dancing - by us. The captain finally showed up - absolutely plastered - to give us a demo with Kyriaki on how it's done. Sags and I volunteered to be the first to have a go and we did a decent job until the music got too fast to keep up with.
Kyriaki was then urging girls to volunteer and have a go but no-one was
Greek DancingGreek DancingGreek Dancing

The captain and Kyriaki show us how it should be done.
really having any of it. Eventually, she got a decent number of girls to do the girl dance which is meant to woo the guys. Looked a bit like belly-dancing. Unfortunately, I don't think any of guys would have been wooed by our girls' performance...
We then did some couples-dancing, that just about everyone got up for, before it was the guys turn to do a dance. With a glass of wine on the floor in the middle of a circle, the captain came back and did some fancy stepover/shuffling thing over the glass and then every guy had a turn. The captain obviously didn't like my stepovers as he promptly removed me and got the next guy to have a go. Gkee went last and as his prize, he got to bend over, pick up the glass with his mouth, and scull the wine.
The last guy-dance thing we did was basically a Greek-style, circle jig that Kyriaki said was the best she had ever seen.

Everyone was pretty knackered from the day and the night before, so no-one did anything crazy that night - we couldn't if we wanted to anyway, as our drunken captain decided to
Church With A ViewChurch With A ViewChurch With A View

Not a bad view.
set sail for Ios overnight due to forecasted rough seas the next day. What do we do with the drunken sailor?
Cue the worst night of the trip...

Yamas!
Derek



Additional photos below
Photos: 20, Displayed: 20


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Approaching SantoriniApproaching Santorini
Approaching Santorini

Passing Oia on the way into port.
The Old PortThe Old Port
The Old Port

Shades of the Cinque Terre.
The CalderaThe Caldera
The Caldera

Looking out at the lagoon that formed 3600 years ago when the volcano erupted and sunk into the sea.
OiaOia
Oia

The town in the north of the island.
Sunset In OiaSunset In Oia
Sunset In Oia

What we waited a couple of hours for.
BougainvilleaBougainvillea
Bougainvillea

These flowers are common all over the Greek Islands and serve as pretty decorations for the whitewashed Greek Island towns.
Windmill CafeWindmill Cafe
Windmill Cafe

Enjoy your coffee with a spectacular view.


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