Pt2 - 10:

 

SANTORINI 

In my mind we were going to have Santorini all to ourselves, so imagine how pissed off I was to discover other travellers aboard the ferry out of Heraklion, how dare they? I call the Romilda a ferry but, like much of the inter-island traffic, it’s a small cruise ship with a vehicle deck. Sailing conditions were ideal and we spent much of the four hour passage lounging in a booth, conserving our energy for the fabled isle. Fully recovered from Samaria, we were up for it.

The approach was spectacular. Sheer cliffs of compressed volcanic ash reared out of the blue Aegean like cross sections of an exotic cake with layers of brown, ochre, red, green and black, all iced with the bright white settlements of Oia, Imerovigli and Thira. We docked about 7:30 as the setting sun cast the sea in bronze. It was like arriving on a movie set.

I might have mentioned elsewhere that travelling on the cusp of the season offers considerable benefits, even if sometimes you have to cope with less than ideal weather. One of those benefits is the very competitive rates for readily available accommodation, a bonus which presented itself now as we stepped ashore. The pier was at the base of one of those steep cliffs beneath the capital Thira, and we were scoping out arrangements for getting to the top when a small, middle-aged woman appeared beside us. Quietly spoken and friendly, she introduced herself as Anna and asked if we’d like to see photos of her rental apartment at the village of Mesaria in the centre of the island. Yes, we’d very much like please. She produced pics of a large villa-style home with internal shots of a spacious, top floor studio apartment complete with kitchen. We settled on 4000 drachs a night (about A$20) and piled into a van with her husband Nico for the sinuous climb up to Thira and the fifteen minute run to Mesaria. We liked the place immediately and gratefully accepted their offer to drive us to the local supermarket for supplies and to line up a little scoot with their friend for the duration of our stay. Too easy.

We dined royally on succulent roast beef and Greek salad at the little taverna over the road and retired to the apartment for luxurious ablutions with real hot water. We could get dangerously used to this.

*

An action-packed day began with a rare treat, tea in bed made with bags bought last evening in Mesaria and water boiled in our own kitchen. Never underestimate the power of small pleasures. We breakfasted on the balcony with extensive views over the eastern beaches framed by enormous eucalypts. Roussos delivered the little Yammi Typhoon at the front door precisely as arranged and within 15 minutes we were making like Marcello and Audrey and buzzing out to Akrotiri at the south-western tip of the island.

As we laboured up the hill outside Mesaria we spotted some interesting dwellings in the valley below and detoured to investigate. We found houses cut into the volcanic rock and painted a brilliant white, rock face and all. There’s a law that all buildings on Santorini must be painted blinding white; the only variations are sky blue domes and ochre doorways. I just made that up, but that is the entire colour scheme of the island right there. And it must be the death penalty for a blemish, because we didn’t spot a single one.

The Minoan excavations at Akrotiri were refreshing for being a working dig. These weren’t hermetically sealed museum pieces, but artefacts still in situ or items delicately retrieved from the soil, coded for identification and stored in field specimen drawers on site. After a while it became pretty bloody warm under the immense steel trussed roof which covered the entire site and suppressed the cooling breeze, so we hopped back on the throbbing pile of pure power that is the Typhoon and motored out to the black sand beaches of Perissa. The water was cool and refreshing but, and this must be a cultural thing coming from someone used to fine white sand, the black stuff looked so much like coarse soot I just couldn’t lie on it without feeling dirty. Silly really.

We rode up to one of the highest points on the island at the village of Pyrgos. The 360^o panorama from the battlements of the old castle took in a vivid carnival of red, mauve, blue and yellow wildflowers in the foreground; in the middle distance the brilliant whites of the built environment against vibrant green vineyards; in the far distance the blue Aegean, the islands of Nea Kameni and Thirassia in the caldera. Later, pre-prandials in hand, we watched the sunset from just above the little Orthodox church on the road to Thira, the trademark white triple-arched belltower gradually silhouetting in the foreground. I’d been here barely a day but the more I saw of Santorini, the more I thought “I could live here”.

About 8 we mounted the trembling steed and rode in to the capital for dinner. Clean, white and dribbling down the cliff face like icing on a cake, Thira instantly charmed our road-worn socks off. It was a delight to explore the brightly lit shops, the improbably clean pedestrian alleyways and steep steps leading to different levels of discovery. Tess found a little gallery full of local art that just blew her away. I haven’t seen her so animated since the silversmith’s in Luxor and it only remained to decide which piece(s) she would return to haggle over tomorrow. A late dinner overlooking the caldera was a perfect punctuation mark to the day, the riding lights of cruise ships and private yachts and the street lights of Nea Kameni and distant Thirassia twinkling in the inky night.

*

A mountainous fry-up on the balcony fortified us for another day on the mighty Typhoon, this time bound for Oia and the northern tip of the island. The aim was to make our leisurely way back down the coast to Imerovigli for a rooftop sunset at the renowned Blue Note Bar. We’d read about the Blue Note “experience” in the travel section of our local paper back home and so were keen to see if, like everything else on Santorini, it lived up to the hype.

The road wound up through technicolour cuttings to the heights of the island. The views out over the flat eastern coastline made us feel like eagles gliding on thermals. I was stopping every few hundred meters to pan sun bleached courtyards, colourful doorways and the endless panoramas. For lunch we stopped at a little café clinging to the side of a cliff, and don’t they all on Santorini. The view stunned us into silent submission; we devoured our toasted sammies and sat back slack-jawed with awe. It took a supreme effort of will to prise ourselves out of our seats and push on to Imerovigli. And here was the one, very minor, disappointment of Santorini.

When we finally found the Blue Note buried in the labyrinth of narrow alleyways and steep stairs it was to discover that, although it was indeed a speccy perch from which to watch the sunset, the chairs were exactly too low and the railings exactly too high to see anything – we’d have to stand up for the show. Pretty dumb. Fortunately we’d arrived early enough to correct the situation, so we jumped back on the trusty Typhoon and sped, as much as you can speed on a step-through, down to Thira.

Miraculously, we scored the same table at the family-run restaurant where we ate last night and settled in for what, with the canvas of gathering atmospherics, promised to be quite a spectacle. Our view, framed by a wide white arch, encompassed Thirassia, Nea Kameni, the entire caldera and the ridiculously handsome sweep of coastline from Imerovigli in the north to the Akrotiri lighthouse on the southern-most tip of the island. I inhaled a few Amstels and Tess worked her way methodically through a half-bottle of the white Lava – an inspired name for the local wine - as the clouds casually assembled for the sunset of the century. By 7:45 it was on in all its splendid glory. I won’t reel off all the superlatives you’re probably expecting, but imagine a symphony of fire spreading across the seascape over the next forty minutes or so. Venus glowing in the solar train and a fingernail moon emerging high up to the left…I couldn’t get it all into frame and so I didn’t bother. I stowed the camera and surrendered to it, allowing it to paint itself indelibly on my memory. By the time it finally subsided and the twinkling lights emerged below us I felt, in some indefinable way, elated. I could have died now and been complete; well, not quite, there was still the fresh spanakopita and classic Greek salad to finish before we rode off into the night.

*

This morning was all business:

1.  Calling home,
2. Ticketing up for Naxos,
3. Purchasing 3 small objects d’art from Amonia Gallery, completed with minimum fuss, moderate expenditure and maximum pleasure.

We treated ourselves to a lazy few hours with trashy novels on Monolithos beach in the afternoon, then motored back in to Thira for another appointment at the restaurant. Fortunately our table was vacant – I was way too mellow to have to murder any table snatchers – and by 6:30 we were back in the dress circle for tonight’s show. Although lacking the drama of last night’s performance the elements didn’t disappoint as we basked in the coppering glow of another day’s death in paradise, not to mention the warm inner glow of a large bottle of red Lava. Replete, we took one last lingering look at the winking lights of Thirassia and rode back to Villa Mesaria.

Tomorrow, the hydrofoil to Naxos.

*

Make no mistake, Santorini is one of the few places on earth where reality meets myth. Too often these postcard paradises disappoint but, if anything, Santorini exceeds expectations. It may have helped that we were visiting out of peak season and so quality accommodation was cheap and came to find us, Roussos bent over backwards to meet our requirements with the scoot, the artwork didn’t require a second mortgage and the island was relatively uncrowded, but the scenery and the people and the food and the weather all lined up to produce one of the highest lights of the journey so far and the deep desire to return.

Next time: Naxos