Santorini

Departing Santorini for the airport our Taxi driver commented, “People do not come to visit Santorini anymore, they come to post on Instagram”. It’s a generalisation that seemed to capture the island’s essence. People were there, seemingly, not to learn, not to engage, not even to experience but simply to demonstrate to others that they were there. Selfies in the plunge pool, selfies by the blue domes, photos in ‘flying dresses’, selfies on the restaurant deck, always striking a pose for the lens but never really present (perhaps their influence-ees on Instagram were there vicariously). This feeling was exacerbated by the cruise ship arrivals when hordes of comfortable-cruise-clothes-clad tourists would flood the laneways and passages, queuing 30 deep at all the photo spots before rushing back to their ships and sailing off into the night. It was all rather strange, particularly as the caldera is so spectacularly beautiful.

In the lower laneways off the main street atop the ridge at Oia, and down by our little hobbit hole in the cliff, it was quieter, and we spent time in the cool of the morning and evening just sitting there watching the light play over the rocks and ocean. Although halfway down the village from the top, we were still hundreds of metres above the water, the elevation providing magnificent views across the caldera to Skaros and Fira, looking like guano on the rocky brown cliff tops, and to the three small islands in the centre of the crater, still active today.

We walked the 10km track from Oia to Fira along the caldera ridge past tiny white churches far above the sea. In one church, the old man caretaker made it known to us that he, his family and ancestors had been coming here and looking after this church for 1700 years. It’s hard for an ancient, prayerful place like that, purchased on a mountain over the timeless sea, not to exude a deep presence. We took a self and moved on.

Skaros, near Fira, was one of the original towns on the island, dating back to before the eruptions in the 1600s. The earthquakes preceding the eruptions caused the villagers to flee and destroyed the town. People later returned to rebuild their homes at Imerovigli higher up on the cliffs, but these were also turned to rubble in the earthquakes of 1956. Oia also suffered damage in the earthquakes but fared better and subsequently flourished due to seaborne trade between Alexandria and Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s a bit of guff, but it explains an important difference between Oia and Imerovigli. Oia is touristy to be sure, but amidst the linen pant suit and blue dome fridge magnet shops, there are also people’s homes and churches and pubs and restaurants and the grounded soul of a peopled town. Imerovigli, or at least the development leading up to it, on the other hand, is nought but sundeck and plunge pool door after door after door. Santorini is 50% down we’re told, due to the war, so most were empty. Add to that the occasional reo-bar porcupined derelict and the whirr of wind through the power lines atop the ridge and you’ve got all the makings of a proper 1950s nuclear bomb test site. It was eerie. We couldn’t wait to get out of there.

I took a detour down to the ruins of the old town on Skaros Rock, and to the church on the caldera side of the rock, clinging to the cliff high above the sea. The 13th-century castle, once the medieval capital of Santorini and a Venetian stronghold against Aegean pirates, is dust and rubble today. From the church, which is still operating today, and surrounding paths, you can see 180 degrees from the white-capped hills of Oia in the north, right around to Fira in the south and then three hundred metres down to the toy-sized cruise liners steadying themselves with their GPS-accurate thrusters in the vast caldera below. It’s worth the walk if you don’t mind 300 metres of stairs.

Coming into Fira’s outskirts, a lady under the tree beckoned us with, “lovely fruits, cool fresha fruits, bootiful!”. We bought ourselves some rockmelon, cherries, orange slices and strawberries and sat munching them in the shade, looking out over the sea. They were indeed, fresha and bootiful. Later at a cafe, the wind caught my clipboard menu and nearly decapitated some poor soul sitting behind us!

In the evenings, it’s quite cool and the moist sea air billows into cloud glowing above Fira’s night-lit, whitewashed stone and concrete. From our deck we watched the full moon rise up from behind the caldera and cloud and into the starlit Mediterranean night sky.

One evening, we did the sunset thing and got a table around on the Western face of Oia to watch the remains of the day – along with about five thousand other people. The sunset was almost as spectacular as the drink prices, but we reckon it was worth it – you know, for Instagram.

In the quiet of the morning of our departure, we wandered down the switch-back stairs to Oia’s Ammoudi Bay where the donkeys wait to carry up bloated tourists who’ve availed themselves of too much seafood and wine. The donkeys are brought down from stables each morning, led down through the town’s narrow laneways and corridors with their hooves clip-clopping on the pavers and their neck bells ringing, by the donkey man, who, this morning, is busy delivering crates of drinking water to the small supermarkets about the town. Deftly, he hops off a wall onto his donkey, and trots back for more goods. A small black dog, the donkey’s friend, apparently, is rarely far away and darts from behind a pot to race off after his buddy. The water in the bay is crystal clear and aqua.

We breakfasted at a lovely restaurant overlooking the sea (they all do here really), then wandered back to pack, shower and have our bags lugged up the steep, winding stairs by a lovely Greek fellow with calves like timber power poles. We puff up behind and join the throngs of departing & arriving tourists and wheely-bag shouldering staff, back past the photo queues and “flying dresses” to the post office where our cab awaits us….then a plane to Athens…then another plane to Crete.