Santorini, Greece

Monday morning – 9.45am and we were sitting onboard the FastCat4 about to depart for Santorini. The day was clear and calm and perfect conditions for speeding over the ocean in a big red catamaran. Two hours later and we were hauling our bags onto dry land again and searching for the taxi that was supposed to take us to our accommodation in Oia, Esperas Traditional Houses.

The staff at Esperas had urged us to let them know our time and method of arrival so they could book us a taxi. We had wondered, as with everything else, whether or not this was yet another way to cream extra Euros out of the dumb tourists. However it turned out not to be – there are apparently only 30 taxis on Santorini and as it was, we ended up having to share our taxi with another couple who were dropped off enroute.

We have now come to the conclusion that this has been the holiday of STEPS...

The scene at Santorini harbour was nothing short of chaos. A blisteringly hot morning and there was a huge crowd of people waiting to get on the ferry, a huge crowd of people trying to offer us accommodation, a huge crowd of people wanting to rent us a car, a huge crowd of people holding signs for their tour groups, and (it seemed like) one taxi driver, thankfully holding a sign with our name on it!

It was a 30 minute journey from the harbour, up the steep and zigzagging road hanging onto the the cliff to Fira, and then onto Oia, at the northern tip of the island. Dwayne, sitting in the front seat of the taxi, was very pleased to get to the end, likening the drive to one of the horror rides you would take at Dreamworld. Many a time he wondered what was stopping us toppling over the edge and down the cliff, and the road often seemed too narrow to accommodate the taxi and the buses coming the other way. Toni was far more relaxed about the whole journey – it was interesting but not quite up to the “excitement” of driving in India…

The other huge benefit to letting Esperas organize the taxi for us was that they were then able to have someone wait at their carpark to take our luggage down to our room for us. By “down” we actually mean down 130-odd steep steps from the carpark to our room……. Not for the faint hearted, those in a hurry, or those with bad knees!

Our room is at the bottom of the complex which is fantastic – great views of the caldera, sunset, and no one walking past our patio on their way to their own room. The downside is that we must climb 74 steps to get to the pool, breakfast, and bar (yes, we’ve counted them, many times!).

We have now come to the conclusion that this has been the holiday of STEPS:

- Venice; walking everywhere, including over bridges

- Cinque Terre; a day of walking the trail, plus the steps up and down the village to our accommodation

- Rome; walking, walking, walking

- Hania; the endless steps of the Samaria Gorge plus three flights of steps required to get to our room

- Heraklion; not so bad, but still many steps uphill required to get from the car to our unit

- Santorini – not only the 124 steps from the top to the bottom of the complex, but also the steps to the village (we haven’t counted those yet…..)

- Singapore – who knows, but if the last two and a half weeks is anything to go by, we’ll find plenty of steps there too!

Anyway, despite the steps, Esperas is the closest thing to heaven we’ve found so far. We have a studio which entails a kitchen, sitting area, bedroom and bathroom, all built into the side of a cliff. The bedroom looks out over the caldera and we can lie in bed and watch the cruise ships pass by each morning. Being built into the cliff means that the termperature inside remains relatively constant, which is great. When it’s 39 degrees outside (as it was today) it is a positively cool 20 degrees inside.

Head up the steps and you come across the bar, pool, and reception area. It is here that we come up for breakfast (which starts at a very civilized 9.00am) and can sit on the balcony, again looking virtually straight down with uninterrupted views over the caldera, and just a wisp of sea breeze to stop you completely overheating. A buffet continental breakfast is included in the tariff and so we have enjoyed the European style of cold meats and cheese with bread, greek yoghurt and honey, cake (!), croissants, and cheese and spinach filo pies.

The pool is half built into the cliff as well, so there is a real cave feel to it. There are also a number of sun loungers around so you can bake in the sun, and have a very refreshing dip every so often to cool off. Oh, and of course, order a drink from the bar which is then delivered to your sun lounger.

We very quickly came to the conclusion that we wouldn’t really want to leave Esperas at all over our next four days, and any intentions we had of exploring the rest of Santorini rapidly got shelved in favour of actually having a holiday and rest…..!

There were a couple of exceptions made (surprise, surprise…). We have managed to drag ourselves away long enough to wander through the shops of Oia and have taken the bus back to Fira (the capital of Santorini, and where the ferries and cruise ships pull in).

Both places are full of tacky and not so tacky tourist shops, designed to extract as much money as possible out of (primarily) cruise ship passengers who arrive early in the morning and depart for the next island late the same evening. We have never seen so many gold and jewellery shops as there are in Fira – just incredible the size and detail of the jewellery on display, and of course the prices very carefully hidden from view.

Fira was more commercial and much busier than Oia. However the highlight of our visit to Fira ended up not being the shopping, but the donkey rides up the path from the harbour below.

We had taken the cable car to the bottom to have a look around the harbour and came across the bottom of the steps where the donkeys are based, and couldn’t resist the opportunity for a donkey ride to the top. While it was the same price as the cable car ride, the donkey was much slower (and more stubborn!). We were put on our respective mounts and they were then chased up to the first corner and then left to climb the 500-odd steps zig-zagging their way up the hill. Funnily enough, both donkeys started off the first couple of stretches fine, however as Dwayne’s donkey headed up the hill and disappeared from view, Toni’s donkey decided it was far more interested in eating whatever scrap of hay it could find on the path. No amount of coaxing would make it move until it heard the bells of another train of donkeys coming up behind. That did the trick and we caught up with Dwayne and his kamikaze donkey (who by this stage had also stopped and wouldn’t budge), and headed up the rest of the hill without incident.

It was a funny experience – on the one hand you wondered how the donkeys coped in the heat, carrying people up this not insignificant hill, all day, every day. In some ways it seemed almost cruel to put them through it. However on the other hand, they were obviously well used to it (they were bred for this work and did it day in, day out); it provided a livelihood to some of the locals; it maintained traditional activities on the island; and, most importantly, it kept the donkeys away from the pet food factory. All in all then we figured the positives outweighed the negatives and were glad to have had the opportunity to experience this.

We had expected to spend only a couple of hours in Fira to have a quick look around but time disappeared when Toni came across a shop selling a stunning range of clothes imported from Italy. Dwayne very patiently sat for almost two hours next to the changing rooms while she tried what seemed like every outfit on offer, and then had to narrow the choices down to the three pieces she finally bought….unfortunately if she had bought all the outfits she liked we would be washing dishes at Esperas for a very long time….!

Oia also benefited from our spending spree. There are vast quantities of paintings for sale of the standard Greek island views. So many in fact, that it became a bit of a turn-off for us, and Toni had pretty much captured those views by camera anyway. But we were on the lookout for some artwork that would evoke the spirit of Santorini and we found these in the gallery of a local artist who had produced some stunning three dimensional mixed-media scenes of boats, doors, building in progress, of Ammoudi Village (at the bottom of the cliff directly below Oia, and our resort) etc. Not the standard stuff at all.

The originals were far too big and unwieldy for us to bring home (OK, OK, at around 5,000 – 13,000 Euros each, they were also well over our budget!), but they did have a range of limited edition reprints on canvas available which were much more reasonably priced. We therefore selected a couple of prints to bring back.

All in all, though, Oia is definitely the best village to be staying in. It has a much more local feel to it and, if it is possible, the shops are less touristy than Fira. Oia is also the place featured in the more famous Greece/Santorini photos so Toni really does feel as though she has come to the place she always dreamed of.

Oia is also one of the best places to enjoy Santorini’s famous sunsets. The sun sets at around 8.30pm at the moment and by 6.00pm people are starting to gather at the lookout just above Esperas. By 8.00pm it is standing room only up there, and of course we are all on our own balconies (or having dinner up by the pool) also enjoying the view. It is quite magical watching the colours change as the sun goes down but the strangest thing we have ever encountered is the spontaneous applause that breaks out every night when the sun does finally disappear. What is this about? Yes, it’s a great spectacle but, clapping for an inanimate object while the earth rotates, does seem a little over the top……

One of the other things you see a lot of in photos and calendars etc are the cats of Greece. We’ve been quite surprised, however, at how few we’ve seen. We were regularly visited by a cat each morning at Nymphes and have seen a couple of cats in Oia, but nothing like we had read about. What we’ve seen mostly have been dogs, virtually everywhere you go. They are all either lying asleep on the street in a bit of shade, or else lying asleep under a table inside a shop, or watching the world go by from just inside the shop door. We have also seen some pretty large (and thick coated) dogs and have wondered how they cope in the heat. Like humans, though, they’ve probably acclimatized to the conditions and appeared to be very content. We certainly saw no problems with dogs annoying people. In fact all of the dogs we’ve come across (and almost stood on!) have been totally disinterested in the vast numbers of people milling around and walking past.

Today is our last full day in Greece. Early (what is it about these early starts?!!!) tomorrow morning we fly out to Athens and then mid-afternoon our plane leaves for Singapore and the start of our journey home. Dwayne is still getting over the fact that we have a wake up call set for 4.30am ....Toni wasn't too popular when she relayed that little gem back to him!  Our aim for today therefore is to spend as much time as possible by the pool, maximizing our tans, before they start fading away in the winter climes of Christchurch……brrr!