We arrived in Santorini at 2am after a 5 hour ferry from Kos. The ferry ride was really smooth until the last half an hour in which if you tried to walk you’d find yourself slamming into the walls. By the time we docked I was quite glad it was over. We got a cab to our hotel where we found out that we had been booked two single beds (‘What?’, the manager said, ‘ I thought you were two girls. You aren’t brother and sister by chance are you?’) but said we’d get switched in the morning.
After switching rooms in the morning we walked to the beach to discover it was black lava rock. While it felt really cool on your feet (it was just like sand) you couldn’t stand on it for more than 5 seconds without feeling like your feet were going to burn off (I bet Travis $5 that he couldn’t lay on it, even for a few seconds, but he didn’t take me up on the offer…) Anyways, we spent the rest of the day on the beach and the night checking out the town of Perissa where we were staying.
The next day we spent by the pool and at night we went into Fira which is the main town on Santorini. We got a restaurant where you could watch the sunset and it was amazing. At night we walked around and checked out the shops (which consisted of a lot of gold shops).
On Thursday we decided that we would do a tour. We were going to rent a scooter but after reading that Santorini has one of the highest accident rates in Greece (because they drive like retards, their roads are insanely narrow and there are mountains everywhere) we decided to do a tour that included seeing a volcano, hot springs and a small town on another island.
The island of Santorini is what remains after a giant volcanic explosion that left behind a few islands. It has, essentially, a giant central lagoon (which is the ocean) and is surrounded on three sides by giant cliffs. We got onto a ferry and our first stop was the island where the volcano was still active. The rocks were all black and not one thing grew on them. I half expected to get on and see a giant hole in the middle with red lava bubbling (to which Travis said ‘ Do you really think they would let tourists walk onto an active volcano and into a lava pit?’ ) but hey that’s what I thought. Anyways, there was no giant hole but rather quite a few and there was no lava either (dang). Instead, there was just small puffs of sulfur clouds and greenish/white looking salt; nonetheless, it was pretty cool.
We were then off to the hot springs. Because the volcano is still active and emitting heat, there are certain coves on the island that heat up (to around 35C). So we took the boat there and hopped off. The best way to describe what we jumped into would be a giant rusty tub that smelled like the worst egg fart you can imagine. So we swam until we felt how warm it was, turned around and hopped out (I’m sure the locals must think the tourists are mental for going into that).
We then went to a small island where we walked one of the cliff edges (about 1000ft), had lunch and swam. At the end of the day we went to a town called Oia to watch the sunset.
We are now on our way to Athens. When we first got to Santorini we realized that all the ferries were completely booked. Although this wouldn't be a bad place to be stranded, we've now found tickets on an overnight ferry to the mainland. Good bye Greek Islands!
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