Spartan accomodations in Thira
Trip Start
Apr 30, 2008
1
18
31
Trip End
May 31, 2008
Santorini,
Greece
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
This morning the wind has died and morning clouds give way to sultry heat. The bus strike is over. (I get the sense that strikes here are frequent and brief. Just adding another level of complexity and chaos to everyday life.) I take the 10 am bus to Kamiri where my guidebook says you can find a cobblestone path up to the ancient Spartan town of Thira, also settled and redeveloped by the Romans during the reign of Augustus (whose summer villa I visited a few years ago on Ponza). The settlement existed in the saddle between two high peaks from the 3rd c. BC - 2nd c. AD.
From the bus stop in Kamiri I can barely make out the zig zag path up the sheer cliff that towers above town, as well as the switchbacks of a road. My noble intentions to make the hike up on foot quickly dissolve in the morning heat and I pay 10 euros to take the bus, which turns out to be MUCH easier and thrilling. At the risk of repeating myself with yet another winding mountain road story, each time seems more impossible than the last. This road, barely wide enough for two small cars, is so contorted that watching through the bus windshield, the face of the mountain and the sea spin by like a merry-go-round ride. Occasionally, the bus stops as a vehicle approaches, sees us and then back back up the road to a turn out. No one would insure a tour company for this shuttle in the States.
Once at the top, there's a further 20-minute steep climb up the ancient marble steps and path to the top. Spartans weren't taking any chances with attackers from the sea. You can see the harbors of two villages below from the top of the headland and given the amount of time it would take to climb up from below, I think Thira didn't entertain too many casual visitors just dropping by for a night on the town. From the top, the ruins of the town spread out in all directions. Nothing much left but foundations and broken columns, cisterns and a 1500-seat theater, but magnificent in its desolation and commanding view of the sea. Grey stone and broken marble shimmers in the midday heat. Gnarled pines cling to the cliff-side above the misty sea.
Then it's back down to the parking area again to wait for the bus, gasping in the heat, for a similarly nightmarish ride back down the mountainside. At each turn, physics ends and faith begins. The air-conditioned KTEL bus back to Fira is a sweet, though brief relief.
I stop in at the Prehistoric Museum for a look at a sizable collection of Bronze Age artifacts from the excavation at Arkotiri, including some of the original Minoan wall paintings depicted in the exhibit I saw the day before. They estimate they have only uncovered bout 3% of Minoan Arkotiri so far. I saw 40,000 year old fossils with the impressions of palm and olive leaves, suggesting the climate has been pretty much the same over the last few hundred millenia. I think of what we consider old in the USA. Mid-century architecture? We are such historical arrivistes.
Back in Fira, I settle into my afternoon routine, finding a cafe perched higher than all the rest and read my book in the shade, enjoying a cool breeze and the worst calamari I have ever eaten - like a fishy tasting wetsuit. Nonetheless, it's a comfortable spot to while away a couple of hours nursing a mug of beer to the sound of down-tempo euro house music, out of the heat with nothing special to do and nowhere I need to be.
