149 days since selling up. David Jones and Paul Twocock recording. Our first joint effort, as we sit on our terrace in Naxos looking out over the sea awaiting the sunset, drinking cold beers. Who knows how this will read. Lets get started.
Our last blog left us in Heraklion in Crete ready for our first Greek ferry experience. We had planned our stay in Heraklion perfectly. We had a lovely hotel within easy reach of the port. We had arrived on time, us and 200 other people - mainly travellers, not many Greeks. We were all asking the same questions of each other: "where is the ferry to Santorini?"
Bravely, I was determined to find out, so I got Paul to queue up and speak to the man in the kiosk. Paul came back and said the man said "is coming!".
We joined the growing number of people and trucks on the dock side ever hopeful for a ferry. Eventually a ferry arrived and we all clambered aboard any way we could, the whole crowd boarding through a tiny side door whils trucks and lorries drove off and on the ferry through the crowd. Once on board we found our allocated seats, just above the engine in steerage, no view apart from the LCD TV playing some Greek melodrama - parakalo! We decided to move from our allocated seats to a quieter area on an upper deck with a sea view. We found some nice wicker chairs (the sort you find in a 1970's conservatory:" do you like Demis Roussos?")
After 4 hours we arrtived in Santorini.
For those of you who haven't heard of it, Santorini is a trés chic, italian sounding island in the middle of the Aegean Sea. It's famous because it's the world's largest volcanic caldera - that's a volcanic crater to you and me, but because this island is so trés chic we all call it a caldera. It is actually spectacular, most of the caldera is submerged under the sea, and the island is a crescent moon shape with 300m high cliffs, all the villages cling to the sides. But every day thousands of tourists are sitting looking at the view oblivious to the fact this volcano will erupt again one day. We didn't feel any tremours while we were there, apart from the rickety wood floor of our mezzanine bedroom whenever somebody got out of bed.
No car in Santorini, we decided to walk everywhere, including a five mile walk to the village of Oia on the northern edge of the island. The views were amazing, and walking on loose lava and pumice sometimes hair-raising, but we felt a sense of satisfaction on reaching the other end. We had a lovely lunch and planned to get the bus back, not realising that was everyone else's plan. Two buses and not a chance of getting on one, we gave up and armed ourselves with water for the five mile trek back. Lucky we did though, as we passed a lonely little white church half way along the path we were greeted by a convoy of cars bibbing their hooters and then a bride wafting up the path to the church. It was like something out of Mamma Mia!
After all that we settled down to another of Santorini's famous sunsets through the volcanic mists that have been there since the time of Odysseus. What better than to see the show with a bottle of cava and some olives and feta. Such a hardlife, island-hopping! Such fun! Anyhoo, next stop Naxos. More of that in the next blog, coming soon! Here's a sunset, there are more in the Santorini album, take a look.
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