We had died and gone to heaven. Santorini was quiet,
peaceful, beautiful, and serene. There was no neon here, no malls, no chain stores, and
very few cars. Everything was blue and white. There was no noise. There were no people.
Because of the crisis in Kosovo very few tourists were
opting to visit Santorini. Bad for them, good for us: we scored a room with a kitchen and
a bath for next to nothing. The owner of our hostel said he was at 20% occupancy; last
year at this time he was at 50%.
We rented a moped so we could see more of the island, and
broke it in on the curvy, steep mountain road down to the port town of Athinos. Since we
had arrived by plane, we hadn't experienced this magnificent view. And magnificent it was.
The water was so blue it was hard to tell where it ended and the sky began.
There were beaches with sand in every color: Red Beach,
Black Beach, White Beach. It was simply amazing what the ancient volcano had done to this
island. The Red Beach was our favorite because it was more secluded, you had to climb up
and around the side of some rocks to find it. It wasn't deserted though, despite
what several rather corpulent old Greek men sunbathing naked must have thought.
We also explored the ancient Minoan village of Akrotiri that
had been uncovered a relatively short time ago. It had been buried by a volcano so much
was still intact. The ruins were set up like an archaological dig would be, which was
fortunate since some of the excavating was still going on. The village featured
intricately designed pots, apartment-like homes, and mass community areas. Many of the
frescoes from Akrotiri dated from 1500 B.C.
Our last day we took our moped to the picture-perfect towns
of Fira and Oia. We had heard the sunset on Oia was wonderful. It was, but unfortunately
this meant a hellish ride back to our flat in Perissa (on the other side of the island) in
the dark. Did we mention that street lights hadn't yet made it to the island? It seemed so
quaint without them in the daylight. The narrow road we had to take back sat high over
cliffs and had many curves. Too bad there weren't any street reflectors or safety
railings. Or directional arrows. We were also ill-prepared for the weather, it was
suddenly freezing cold. You cannot imagine how relieved we were to make it back after one
very long hour on that little moped!
One last thing: there was no Cybercafe on the small Island
of Santorini, so we even had a vacation from that! :-)
Again, we had a fabulous time, wish you all were there, and
really hated to leave. But Turkey was beckoning, so off we went to Rhodes, our stop-off
point to Turkey.
