We had booked on the Volcano and Hot Pools tour today, so we packed our bags accordingly and wore out bathers. Before leaving, I did some research, and becoming increasingly despondent that we had made a mistake. The hot pools weren’t “hot” per say, but just warmer than freezing sea temperature, and the whole swimming bit seemed really unappealing. I got a bit crabby as we left our accommodation, following a train of donkeys through the back streets.
We decided to walk down to the Old port via the stairs - the other options are to take the cable car, or go via donkey. I had decided that I did not want to take a donkey ride here - especially after seeing them. They looked pretty sad and not very well treated, and this was repeated in the reviews I had read.
So we started the walk down, and had to skirt lots of donkeys. Many were huge - they were probably mules, and looked more horse-like. The walk down was - suffice to say - shit. It was covered in shit. They don’t tell you this in the reviews, nor do you see it in the photos. It stank like donkey shit and was covered in donkey shit. At one point, of course - I slipped over. Thankfully, I managed to land in a patch that had no donkey shit otherwise my mood may have been even worse. I hurt my hand in the fall, and was just generally unimpressed.
This is my problem - I get so worked up over a thing or a place that my disappointment knows no bounds when it doesn’t meet those expectations, even if I try really, really hard not to get my hopes up about a things. (The hot air ballooning in Cappadocia, somehow even exceeded my ridiculous expectations.) I was thinking, “I hate it here. I don’t know what the fuss is about. It stinks, it’s slippery, this tour is going to suck.”
To be fair, the tour wasn’t great, but thankfully later that day my feelings towards Santorini did take a turn. We got to the bottom sans anymore slips, and waited for our boat. There were about 15 other people doing the tour with us, and we all piled on. Dan and I sat in the front portion of the boat which didn’t have a lot of covering or protection which would soon make itself apparent.
Our guide came over the speakers and explained what was going to be happening. First, we would go to the Volcano and walk to the crater, followed by skirting around the island to the hot pools. This was the opposite direction to what I had read, and I was quite relieved. What I haven’t mentioned yet is the waves - today the weather forecast, whether sunny or not, was only described as “WINDY” and windy It was. The waves were extremely choppy, and once we set sail our little boat was buffeted about. Many times the sea water hit the side, splashed over the edge and soaked Dan and I. Occasionally, it would come in the other side of the ship, but most of the time it was ours.
After about 25 minutes of my stomach lurching every time we crested a wave, we docked at the volcano. Here we saw our guide for the first time, paid our additional €2.50 entry fee each and started the climb up. Somehow this also hadn’t occurred to me, but it turned out not to be a problem. Dan and I ended up overtaking everyone and being the fastest people just behind the guide. Some people had a lot of trouble with the rocky uneven and uphill ground, but we have done plenty of walking like this and knew what to expect. Up and up we went, and the wind became greater and stronger. I wanted to take off my sunnies to survey the landscape unhindered, but couldn’t because they were keeping the masses of dust from blowing into my eyes.
On a good day, ti would have been windy up here as it was completely unprotected, but today had a forecast of windy - so it was almost a hurricane. We reached the crater, and our guide explained what lay before us. We could see steam or dust or ash coming up from a few holes not far from us, and despite the wind we could still smell the sulphur. The volcano is still active, and last erupted in the 60s. Our guide explained that the additional entrance fee is so that they can keep a close watch on its activity and make sure everyone is safe. She said that the ground here is warmer (which we could definitely feel), and that the ground temperature down in the crater just below us was about 100C.
Normally I would try to reword this, but today I'm quoting straight from Photo Volcania, which came up as the first link on Google: "Santorini is largely volcanic in origin and consists of several islands arranged in a ring around a flooded caldera."
We now had free time so we circled around the top, also taking in the view of the beautiful island and white towns we could just make out. I laughed to myself as we got buffeted about, thinking “not only do we have to worry about being blown down a ravine, but we could get blown down a ravine into the crater of an active volcano. We didn’t spend a lot of time here - it was just too windy - so long before the appointed time we made our way back down to the boat via a different path than what we went up.
It seemed that everyone got back to the boat early so we left early, headed for the hot pools. I had started leaning towards not swimming, although I decided I Would wait until we got there to ascertain the situation. I knew that it was a brown muddy patch that you had to swim towards, and when we got there and I saw the waves, I decided not to do it. I am a bad swimmer these days, not confident or strong at all, and the waves would have been just to big for me to comfortably swim in it. You see, you have to jump off the side of your boat into the [freezing] ocean, and then swim - maybe about 20m, to the opening of the thermal pool bay, where it got shallower (you could even stand up here). However, swimming back to the boat would have been problematic - against the waves.
This is what I had come to do, and I wasn’t going to do it. Perhaps on a calm summer day I would have, although still the things I had read had said it was more of a tick off thing to do rather than a great experience. The water temperature differences was from 18C to 25C, so not even super hot, and the brown muddy sulphur water would ruin any jewellery or colourful bathers. Our boat stopped, and a lady was ready in her black bathers. Without blinking, she dived in and start swimming towards the bay - not even a blink of how cold the water was. Obviously a seasoned winter swimmer!
The next few people exclaimed at the cold, and soon they were off too, towards the bay. Some American jocks jumped in a powered their way across, making it in about 3 strokes. One larger guy jumped off, and he looked like he wasn’t trouble swimming. He hadn’t aimed quite right, and ended up right on the rocks. The first mate on the boat was calling out to him to come back, although he didn’t seem to hear and kept buffeting against the rocks. The first mate threw (very skilfully) a life ring and it landed right near him, so he grabbed it and swam his way back. He wasn’t the only one that needed rescuing.
I was disappointed that our boat stopped to the side of the bay, and so we never really saw inside it, except for a bit of a brown muddy opening. Other ships stopped in front of it and had the clear view. We watched as more people swam, and other people had to get rescued as their overestimated their swimming abilities. This would have been me. I would have gotten about 5m and then needed to be rescued. One lady was struggling, and when the life ring was thrown to her, the wave caught it and flung it into the rocks out of her reach. A second ring thrown to her made it, and she paddled back to the boat.
After a while, it was time for people to come back. As the Americans got closer to the boat, the tour guide shouted out if anyone would be able to collect the rogue ring that was up amongst the sharp rocks. This was the American’s time to shine, and after a lot of confused looks, one finally volunteered and powered his way to the rocks. Hero. To the side of him, there was a dilapadted tent, and a doggy came out to look at the commotion - obviously someone lives here! There was also a small church next to the thermal pools, so it must be visited occasionally.
Soon it was time to make our way back to shore, and I was quite relieved. The tour hadn’t lived up to my expectations and the water was so choppy that I was feeling a bit seasick. At one point, I thought I’d try to take a photo near the edge of the boat and the next thing I knew, I was covered in Seaspray and everyone laughing at me. I guess I had that coming!/
Once on land, we caught the cable car back up. There’s no way I was going to ride a donkey, they just looked too sad. We jumped in the cable car, which was more of a mixture of funicular and gondola, and bumpily began the ascent (with me exclaiming, Is this really any better than riding a donkey?)
After the tour we had planned to hike from Thira to Oia. I was feeling pretty dejected, and it took some convincing from Dan to actually get up and do it. I had read that it was a must do on the island (but then again, so were the volcanos and hot pools) and I didn’t think I had it in me to complete a solid 2.5 hour hike through a lot of uphills. He managed to convince me, and at about 3.30pm we left our accommodation, hoping to catch the sunset when we arrived in Oia.
The hike ended up being spectacular and a definite must do if your body allows. It’s not overly strenuous - we made it more so by choosing the scenic paths in a few places instead of the easy paths, which made it considerably more intrepid. You can find the way to take the path here, [insert link], and this is what we used as our guide. Most places had a fully paved path, others nicely worn dirt paths, and others had us scrambling over rocks. The whole time, the wind kept up - but it wasn’t as bad as the volcano, and frankly kept us cool while we did so much exercise!
Every so often you’d make it to the next town, and wander through the white washed streets. The sheer cliff face was below us, and ahead of us we could always keep Oia in our sights, and right in the middle was quite a large hill. “I hope we aren’t scaling that!” I said, just before we ended up scaling it. It wasn’t as bad as all that, in the end. We were overtaken and we overtook others. In the end, the journey took us 3.5 hours because we made many photographic stops on the way. I loved the little churches dotted around the hills or rocky outcrops.
Soon, civilisation starting to become more frequent, and we reached the Welcome to Oia sign. We were now in the outskirts of the town - the beautiful part was still probably a good half an hour way away.
As we walked the amount of people grew thicker and thicker; we popped down a couple of alleys (and found the postcard spot - teeming with people! At least we would know where to find it again). Our plan was to grab a wine to celebrate our hike and to have a good sit down. We walked along the “front” of the town - that is, the cliff face that overlooks the sunset, and everywhere people were pushed up against the wall, securing their spot. We found a lovely little place to take photos, and then spotted a free table not far from it, so we sucked up the €6.50 that each glass of wine was, sat down, and enjoyed the show.
Santorini sunsets are famous, and from Oia it is particular spectacular. From Thira, the sun dips behind the Thirissa island but from Oia, it falls almost into the ocean before disappearing behind a tiny little island, which ends up illuminating the sun. It looks like a bright orange disc and hasn’t much power so you can look at it. We were particularly lucky to have such a clear night to see it - many people take their expensive cameras and never get a chance!
And so we drank our overpriced wine and watched the sunset. A kitty visited us briefly, which resulted in a quick flurry of photos, and once the sun had fully set, it became really quite cold. Time to find some food, especially as the wine had gone straight to our heads!
I had found two places that received good reviews - we only wanted something cheap like gyros as we had spent so much on wine. The first place had no indoor seating, and we ended up at another just down the road. They didn’t do gyros, but reasonably priced savoury crepes, and turned up to be delicious and a welcome change from the gyros! It was called Hungry Donkey and the food and service was impeccable. We were watched the whole time with puppy dog eyes from a young 6 month old puppy who was eyeing our crepes lustfully!
Time to catch the bus back to Thira. We had found a bus time table from 2012 so we were pretty sure the buses ran every 20 minutes according to that. We found the bus station, and I just popped into the tourist office to make sure we were in the right spot. ‘Yes, the last bus for tonight leaves from just outside.”
The last bus? It was only 9.20pm. We later found a much more up to date timetable and yes indeed, at this time of year, 9.20 is the last bus. Lucky for us! We piled on the bus with a lot of other people also wanting to catch the last bus and landed back in Thira. The drive took about 25 minutes to our 3.5 hours, and it was quite funny approaching the same landmarks - much more quickly - via the road.
Well and truly exhausted, we hit the hay after a very long, and in the end very lovely day!
Til next time,
xx
No comments:
Post a Comment