Touring Santorini

  Perissa, Greece
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

We headed out for the ferry port in Heraklion, Crete fairly early only to find out, much to our dismay, that the ferry was late.  They didn't know how late, but they were sure it would get there soon.  Three hours after it was supposed to have left, it arrived (yay!) two hours of sitting on the boat later we finally left.  On the positive side, lightening the monotony, there was a lanky french girl in the ferry terminal who was getting more and more distraught as time went on.  She thrashed about in her chair in her mild attempts to get some sleep, followed by several occasions of shouted french at the Greek ferry dude which included some hysterical, lanky, gesticulating. 

We arrived in Santorini 5 hours later than we had planned and basically had to settle in for the night.  It seemed like Canada was forming an invasion of Santorini in the form of backpackers.  Everyone in our transfer bus to our hostel was Canadian!  We made some friends and chatted on our way in.  We scored a fantastic room for the night at a great price due to it still being off season.  The hostel was fantastic (except for the lack of hot water).  We had a double room in a building that was just down the road from the main complex.  There were only about 4 rooms in our building and it had a pool right beside it.  The hostel also helped us arrange our ferry tickets to leave Santorini (which is where the problems came in :p).  Due to the utter randomness of the slow (cheap) ferries, we couldn't stay more than one night in Santorini and still make Meteora in good time, as the ferries for the next few days were either non-existent or at the worst times ever.  So, we had not quite one full day in Santorini to see the best of it.

The Streets of Fira

We trekked out in the morning for a cheap rental vehicle.  Seemed like the done thing was scooters, cars, or quads.  As a car was too much for just two of us, and the guy wouldn't rent us a scooter, we raced out of town on a quad bike headed for Fira (the biggest city on the island).  Hitting Fira, Ia (if you've seen pictures of towns on Greek islands, it's from Ia) and back to our base town of Perissa, we headed for an archeological site on the island only to find out it was closed... so we hit Red beach (the beach isn't really red, just the cliffs beside it) and then the lighthouse at the tip of the island.  It was a beautiful day with a bright sun and a bit of a breeze.  With the wind in our hair, and the bugs in our teeth, we had an awsome time scooting around the island.  Our poor ATV was pretty underpowered, and probably wouldn't have made it off road (we had enough trouble with any inclines!) but we managed to get around the whole island. 

The Greek Lady

Santorini really is just like the postcards and paintings you see of Greece.  We imagined it is pretty packed in the summer, but it was pretty quiet when we were there.  As we walked in, there was a little old lady sorting out her laundry on the steps of a beautiful blue domed church.  Her face was so lined and weather beaten with bright blue eyes.  We asked in broken Greek if we could take a photo of her and she laughed with a big, toothy grin and posed very seriously.  There was one cruise ship in the harbour, and we managed to see most of the towns one step ahead of the cruise ship hordes, walking into Ia with few people in the streets but having to push our way out the last few feet as they decended on the town like a pack of ravenous beasts!  Asian tourists stopping in the middle of the road and taking photos of everything on massive cameras, Americans gossiping about friends affairs back home, Canadians asking infuriatingly polite questions of everyone, and Russians being generally loud and flashy everywhere.  The mix of cultures and accents was awsome!  Such a juxtiposition against, what seemed like, the quiet serenity of the view.  We felt pretty satisfied with our pics and touring of the island so we decided to head back to town a little early and email home before our overnight ferry that night. 

Gabrielle in a Postcard

Turns out, the last transport from our hostel to the ferry left 15min after we had arrived back (despite that the ferry wasn't for another 3 hours - random!).  We managed to squeeze 12 people into the back of an 8 seater van and chilled out at the ferry terminal in Santorini with a couple of Canadian girls from Ottawa.  Again, almost everywhere we looked we were surrounded by bags with Canadian flags.  I think Canada could stage a take over of the Greek Islands via backpackers right now.  They'd never see it coming!  one night there partying, the next... domination!  Too bad Canadians are too polite eh?

Our overnight ferry was... fun.  It was loud, with this random banging noise that would start out of nowhere for extended periods of time before it would stop... for about 2min and start again.  We eventually scored a slightly quieter spot and managed to get some broken sleep.

We arrived in Athens this morning with our Canadian compatriots and a gaggle of about 7 of us backpackers (us, two Canadians, an Aussie, an American, and a Kossavoian) managed to figure out the train system, lose each other, meet up again, and make our way from the port to the train station.

Turns out that the train that was leaving as we walked in was the one that Gabrielle and I wanted to take us to Meteora.  The next one was at 4pm, 6 hours later.  So we stashed our bags in some lockers and said goodbye to our new friends before we headed back into Athens to kill some time.  It's a bit of a gray day here today with some sporadic raining, and we're tired and in need of a shower, but we're cheerful!  Next stop, Meteora!

All our best from Greece

Dan and Gabrielle