Adventures of Beth and Dan: Pitch black beaches, white washed cliffs and sensational sunsets.... Santorini!

Today is a day once again using tenders. Holland informed us that they won’t use theirs today but will be contracting out with the locals. Tendering means we need to get up early to get tickets to get off. So early it is.

They say Santorini is the most ruggedly beautiful of the Aegean islands. Also known as Thira this island owes it dramatic landscape to one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history. In 1600 BC the volcano erupted in a catastrophic explosion and what was once the island of Thira sank to the bottom on the caldera and the sea rushed in to create the great bay. Cliffs rise to 1100 feet with the white clusters of the towns of Fira and Oia perched along the top

We have a private tour here with Olympic Tours with Niki. As it turns out there are large groups of us that they then divide into smaller groups of 10-12. Our tour is called the Oia ( E-ah) Experience. We take a short 15 minute ride by boat to another port area. There are lots of boats trying to disembark here and we can tell it’s going to be a crazy people packed day. Once we are off the boat we walk up a very steep hill to several minutes vans waiting to take us more into the city of Oia where we will disembark with a guide, have time on our own for several hours then meet our guide again for touring a winery and then seeing the back side of the island. There are two other ships in Piet this day so it’s just very difficult finding any time where you aren’t bombarded with people from all directions. Not having been here before we feel compelled to walk both directions and see all we can.

Our friends dive off into a quaint small cafe area and relax with a drink and snack. The day is warm and we soon find little shade. We do take in the blue domed roofs and white painted adobe buildings everywhere. Only a few families live in Oia. Most of the buildings are shops, restaurants, B and B’s or hotels. All toilets here are pay toilets and with thousands in the area finding one is difficult so we avoid eating or drinking much. After a few hours we meet up with our group and guide and take off to see more of the area where locals live which is dry and very arid. There are some crops but weather is hard to come by and rain doesn’t come often. People live very simply. 22,000 people live on this island in 15 villages. Fishing and tourism make up most of their economy .

We soon stop for an interesting winery stop. The tour is mostly under ground except for the wine tasting. The grapes here are grown in the shape of wreaths on the ground because the pumice stone in the soil holds water and with no irrigation the wreath forms shade the grapes and the pumice gives off humidity to provide more moisture for the grapes. Some of the vines grow to be 50-75 years old. Along with the pumice in the soil there is also black and red basalt. Grapes are harvested in August and then fermented in stainless steel vats fermenting or aging 5-10 years.

They serve us tapas with four different sampling’s of wines. Most don’t purchase because transporting them home becomes to difficult. But we enjoy our time here. Our means of getting back to the ship is either by queuing up in a very very long line of tourists to take the cable car to the bottom where the tenders wait fir us or all down the old donkey trail that still takes passengers up the hill by donkey. Most feel this should be abandoned as the poor donkeys never have shade and are treated poorly but for now it still operates. The way down takes almost 25 minutes in the hot sun over tiled or stone paths that are strewn with donkey excretions!! And the donkeys are still coming up and down the path scaring lots of the walkers!! But we make it and after about another 15 minute wait we are back on our tenders heading to the ship.

We get cleaned up and ready for dinner feeling tired and ready to relax. Our entertainment for the night is a variety show comedian, David Copperfield. He was ok but not a favorite. We hung out a little bit at the BB King blues club and then headed back to our cabins knowing that our next day would be a day at sea where we could sleep in and kick it!!

Lots to see and do here

Here is the cable car that takes you to the top and the town of Oia or take the donkey ride up or walk. We took the boat ride over to another port then got buses up .