To the Islands

After booking my ticket to Santorini, I found that I had a lucky coincidence. Sophia works for a Greek travel website as a translator, writing content in English. As it happened, she and two of her colleagues were making a trip to Santorini as well–on the same ferry I had booked that morning. I took the metro to Piraeus, the port of Athens, and made my way to the massive ferry that awaited the hordes of tourists heading to the islands.

I found Sophia and her friends, Stavros and Michael, half an hour or so after departure. We found a place on deck and talked for the entire five hour journey–philosophy and history, and then, because Michael is a bass player in a jazz band, music theory and bands. It was dark when we disembarked. The three of them had driven a car that was full of equipment with absolutely no room (Sophia was sitting near the roof on the pile in the back), so we split up at the docks, with a plan to meet the next day. I headed to Fira, the main town of Santorini, on a two euro bus that took the winding road up the high cliffs from the harbor. The ferry was leaving as we climbed, a glittering mass of light that reflected in the still water of the bay under the full moon above.

Fortunately, Fira isn’t all that large of a town, and the bus station is on the edge, so I was able to find a place to camp less than ten minutes’ walk from the station. Not so fortunately, my sleep schedule was still on Athens weekend time–going to sleep at sunrise, waking up at noon. I slept briefly and fitfully, then gave it up when the sun came up and the day got hot. I walked into town at seven to the beautiful sight of the white buildings built into the volcanic cliffs high above the blue waters of the Aegean. The town was empty save for a few people hosing down the streets.

That changed quickly. In the sea below Fira, two cruise ships were anchored, and a stream of small boats were heading out to bring in the first loads of tourists. Half an hour later they were arriving at the city via cable cars from the old harbor or by the donkey trains that still run up the steep path down to the water’s edge. It was hot, too, and bright: with the deep blue of the waters, the clear blue of the skies, and the pure white of the buildings, it’s easy enough to see where Greece got its national colors.

I met up with Sophia, Stavros and Michael a little after noon, and had my first taste of the life of a professional travel writer. They had a list of sites to visit and photograph, and were madly dashing from place to place to get it all in in the five days or so they’ll be here. That day, that meant hiking through Fira along the coast to its highest point, and then out to a bare pinnacle of rock. I, of course, had to climb it–and found, on the top, the ruins of old houses dug into the top. Michael told me there had been a problem with piracy here at one point, and this pinnacle has a naturally commanding view of the harbor, and was used as a fortress until a great earthquake destroyed most of the town that had been here.

After finally getting back to the car (empty of equipment now) we headed for the famous sunset at Ia, on one of the points of the island’s crescent-like shape. There were no clouds in the sky, so the sunset was only an average one (Michael: “That’s it? I want my money back!”), but it was pretty enough, and a good place to just sit for a couple of hours.

I camped that night near where they were staying, in Akrotiri, on the other end of the island, and met with them the next morning for a full day’s work. Wine-tasting in the morning and early afternoon: different local wines in rustic surroundings, and “Vinsanto,” a local dessert wine made from sun-dried grapes–tasting, perhaps not surprisingly, like sweet raisins. We photographed everything, and then took a walk through a beautiful little village without so much of the crowded tourist-focused feel of Fira or even Ia. We climbed to the top, where a Greek Orthodox church and the ruins of a castle give a wide view across the coast in both directions, over the white buildings of the village, and the white clusters farther away of the other cities.

As the sun set we made one last hike down from the cliffs to an overlook and an old church. The top layer of Santorini is compressed volcanic ash with a texture and color almost like white plaster, and there are cave houses everywhere dug into it. At the edge, where we were hiking, the rock is eroded into the fantastical shapes one can see in the states in the redrock canyons of the southwest.

Then it was time to part again, and this time possibly for good. They dropped me off in Perissa. My plan was to go to Thira the next day (today) and get my next ticket to continue my journey towards Turkey and Istanbul, and to call them if I ended up being here for another day. So, I said my goodbyes and headed to the beach to spend the night–quite a long walk, through the vineyards around Perissa, as the sun finally set behind me. I arrived on the long black sand beach and slept on a beach chair.

This morning I took an early swim and then took the bus to Thira to check my tickets. I had two options: either go back through Athens and take the train or bus from there to Turkey, or to try to cross the Aegean to the Turkish coast and bus north from there. I chose the latter, and booked a ferry to Rhodes for tomorrow afternoon, then called Sophia–and found that her cell phone was off or broken. I’ll try again soon, but if I don’t get in touch with her before I leave: Sophia, thanks again for everything.