On the edge of the volcano - Santorini

  Santorini, Greece
Sunday, September 30, 2007

On Sunday, September 30 a bus whisked (har!) us away to the other side of Athens to the Port of Piraeus. There we boarded a "high speed" ferry for the ride to Santorini. This large, water-jet propelled boat was the real deal and featured reserved seating and a restaurant of sorts. Our reserved seats were at a table for six, which had two drawbacks. First it was directly adjacent to the smokers' table and they blew smoke at us for the entire journey. Second, only four of our group were at this table, with Ted and Marlene being located several rows away, and so they came out ahead. For lunch I had some traditional Greek cheese pie, because they were out of everything else, and it was like trying to masticate and swallow a sea-sponge.
 
The ferry made an unscheduled stop at the Island of Ios, so our first sighting of a Greek Aegean isle was this charming little spot. Cameras were broken out to take pictures of pretty white churches, houses and whatnots that sprinkled the otherwise gray-brown landscape. One more stop at the Island of Paros, where we would spend a couple of days later on, and then we were pulling in to the harbour at Thera (also spelled "Thira" and "Fira") on Santorini.
 
Santorini must surely be one of the most visually stunning islands on the globe. It is all that is left of the crater of a huge volcano that blew up around 1450 BC, creating tsunamis and blankets of volcanic ash that apparently destroyed entire civilizations - think "Atlantis". It is a geologist's paradise because of the highly accessible layers of volcanic ash and out-flow that run in white, red and black slashes across vertical surfaces.
 

The volcano from Thera

Vertical is the word that comes to mind thinking back on Santorini. The section of the caldera that is Santorini rises straight up from the water to heights of 1000 feet. The towns of Thera and Oia perch on the rim of the caldera and in places tumble down its face for a couple of hundred feet. The cliff face continues down below the sea to a depth of 1300 feet and the two numbers add up to incredible amount of solid matter (estimated to be 96 cubic kilometers) that headed for the sky in 1450 BC.
 
It was getting late by the time we arrived at the dock in Santorini so when we were deposited at the hotel we just stayed put and had our dinner there. This was a mistake. The Santorini Palace is listed as a "superior" hotel and it was just fine in many ways. Our rooms had scenic views of the clay brick wall being erected several feet to the north and so were typical of the sort of accommodation given to Air Transat tours. On the other hand, it was clean, comfortable, had several amenities and was sort of central to what was going on.
 
Looking at things to do and see the next day, we crossed off a trip to Nea Kamini, the active volcanic cone, from the list because it involved a boat ride. Other guided tours seemed a tad expensive and didn't go anywhere we couldn't get to by public transportation. So we decided to do bus trips to the towns of Oia and Akrotiri and a donkey ride up the face of the caldera.
 
The next morning, having attended to an urgent need for laundry services, we were on a bus for the short but often harrowing ride along the caldera rim to the town of Oia.

Oia, Santorini

Oia is the quintessential model for Greek Island tourist brochures. Somehow clinging to the very edge of the crater, its bright white-painted buildings cascade in terraces down its sheer surface, resembling the head of a giant pint of cold beer. Its narrow cobblestone walkways follow the line of the crater rim and offer SHOPPING that becomes overwhelming. The range and variety of goods seem infinite; jewelry ranges from early-Zellers tacky to gem-encrusted gold work that would make Cleopatra blush. Clothing from the required "I was here" tee shirt to the height of Armani elegance. The only let-up was that every third shop was a café or restaurant. A well-mannered dog lay basking in the sun outside every store entrance and would give a quick tail-wag salute when spoken to.
 
In Oia, as with Thera, a patron at a café does not buy a cup of coffee or a light snack. Rather, one rents a seat for the view. And the view is sensational, looking out over the lagoon far below and watching huge passenger liners cruise merrily and silently about like model ships at the town park. As a side bar to this, our host, Billy Brown, who used to work in Hamilton, told us about watching the sinking of the Sea Diamond cruise ship several months ago from this very spot. The jury is still out on how its Captain allowed the tragedy to occur, but the ship struck rocks as it entered the lagoon and sank just off Thera. We were supposed to be sailing on Sea Diamond in a few days time and it was an eerie feeling to be looking down on her grave.
 
We spent the better part of the day wandering about the town and it was quite pleasant - but you have to like the "S" word and painted cement.
 
Back in Thera we picked up our laundry. The bill for two washer loads was €14.00 plus one brassier.
 
We had read about a restaurant called the Flame of the Volcano, or something, and decided to give it a try for dinner that evening. Stopping along the walkway that follows the rim of the crater the entire length of Thera we

Sunset from Thera

took photographs of the sunset that Santorini is famous for, as the sun settles behind the volcano and Thirasia Island and into the Aegean Sea.
 
The restaurant was very busy but we were able to find a table way at the back and away from the breathtaking views. Our waiter was hard-pressed to keep up to the volume of diners and raced back and forth from the kitchen, sweat slinging from every pore. When we did manage to secure his attention he became quite chummy, allowing as how he actually lives in New York city and by the way has a rupture the size of a muskmelon which he insisted on showing us several times. Perhaps he sensed that Marlene is a nurse. He also insisted on filling and re-filling a pitcher with house wine the colour and consistency of Kool-aide and would not take "No" for an answer. All in all we were not unhappy to pay the bill for a mediocre meal and leave.
 
We wandered along the rim path for a while, people watching and doing some serious SHOPPING, then headed back to the Palace.
 
The next day we lit out by bus for the town of Akrotiri at the southerly extreme of the island. We weren't sure why we were going there but it seemed the right thing to do. The bus let us off basically in the middle of no-where. Across the road there was an archeological dig, but it was closed to visitors. This was a major loss for us, as we were to find out later at the Archeological Museum in Thera. Anyway, we followed the road in the direction the

The Red Beach

bus had gone and eventually came to some civilization and some signs that pointed to "the Red Beach". We followed the signs past a little church, up and over a rough footpath and came upon an unusual sight.
 
The footpath skirted below a high hill to our right. As we came around the foot of the hill to the ocean we saw a diagonal deposit of rust-red volcanic material, perhaps 250 feet deep, that slashed from the peak of the hill at about a 35° angle across the beach and into the clear blue ocean. This volcanic outflow now made up the beach "sand" and thereby the name Red Beach. We were told that there are beaches in white and in black sand that have similar origin. Regrettably they were only accessible by boat.
 
We went back in the direction we had come and, cutting toward the sea, lucked upon a restaurant that was actually a cave carved into the powder-soft volcanic ash layer that was about 60 feet deep at this point. The place was called "The Cave of Nicholas" and we enjoyed a very pleasant meal of grilled fish. We then had an uneventful walk up through what passes for a vineyard on Santorini and arrived in the "new" town of Akrotiri where we caught the bus back to Thera.
 
In Thera the ladies went on to the SHOPPING area while the men went into the Thera Archeological Museum. It was one of those serendipitous decisions that turns out brilliantly. The museum features treasures that have been unearthed at Akrotiri and they are stunning.
 
Minoan society, which was centered in Crete but about which little is known, had established an outpost at Akrotiri somewhere between 2000 and 1700 BC. What makes Akrotiri so important is that the inhabitants apparently fled in haste just before the volcano blew up, leaving many of their possessions behind. Their buildings, art and material goods were covered, and therefore protected, by a thick blanket of volcanic ash and have remained so for over 3000 years.
 
It is estimated that archeologists have uncovered less than three percent of the settlement at Akrotiri. What has been uncovered, however, is truly amazing. Multi-storied building complexes, highly decorated pottery, tools and ornaments in bronze and some in gold, undeciphered writings etched on clay tablets. The most interesting to me, however, were wall frescos found in a three-story building that has been named "House of the Women". Wonderfully coloured and preserved paintings of lilies and of women clad in what appear to be loose pantaloons are featured. But the most remarkable fresco was one that featured a band of gracefully frolicking blue monkeys! There are no monkeys on Santorini and if there are some on Crete I am pretty sure they are not blue. Why and how did these things get here? Where is Indiana Jones now that we need him?
 
Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, we next re-joined the ladies for a cable-car ride down the face of the caldera to the "old port" of Thera. We spent little time there, as there was little but more SHOPPING and café dining, but went directly to our main objective - the mule ride up the switchbacks to the top of the caldera.
 
There were probably fifty mules and donkeys milling about in a small enclosure and you can imagine the smell. As fast as a tourist showed up he or she was thrown atop a mount and away they would go. Marlene was first aboard and she expected a short lesson in mule etiquette or something. Instead the mule just took off for the top of the mountain and the look on her face, as she realized what was happening and tried to get her feet in the stirrups, was the highlight of the entire trip. In fact we never stopped laughing for the entire ride.

A six legged burro

 
Linda was given a tiny but mighty little donkey to ride. The animal was so small that, with Linda's long limbs draped over it, it looked like it had six legs as it scrambled up the mountain. Marlene's mount was determined to scrape her off on either the mountain side or the retaining wall, depending on whether it was zigging or zagging. When it was perpetrating this outrage on the wall-side, Marlene was looking straight down for many hundreds of feet. At the end of the ride she had several abrasions on both legs for souvenirs.
 
There were no reins or other method of control for these animals. You were supposed to hold on to a metal hoop where the pommel would have been and let the steed do its thing. Malcolm and I had mounts that decided to race each other to the top and banged and jostled with each other in the attempt, more or less careening around corners to the utter dismay of tourists who were trying to walk down the path. These walkers would whoop imprecations, mostly in German, no doubt questioning our equestrian skills as they were brusquely shouldered aside by the mules.
 
About one hundred yards short of the top of the cliff there was a herd of another fifty or so mules. Our animals, believing they had reached the promised land, dove into the midst of this herd and we sat, marooned in a sea of sweating equines, not sure what was supposed to happen next. Doubt about what was supposed to happen was cleared up by hollering Greeks who made it known that we were to consider the ride to be over and we should go away. This was easier hollered than done because we were all pinned on either side by up to 800 pounds of reeking mule. Eventually the issue was resolved and we were able to secure the relative sanity of the SHOPPING zone.