Sat/Sun 7.24-7.25 Part III: Make Your Own Luck

We awoke at 9:00 AM and had what turned out to be quite a good breakfast at the hostel. Eggs, bacon, toast, coffee, and juice, and in the heat, we walked back to the ferry to go to Santorini. Once on the ferry [both this and the last had very comfortable seats by the way], we noticed that they were playing an episode of Doug!! *childhood memories ensue*

And then, of course, I immediately fell asleep afterwards and woke up in the port in Santorini. We made our way to Fira with some shady dealings with the people who were picking Nick and Sam up to go to their hostel (we weren't actually supposed to be on the van with them, but the woman was super nice). And I thought to myself, "I need to get one of those stuffed donkeys to remind myself of the awesomeness of this trip." And after much walking up and down the hills of Fira, I found one. And I found myself wanting to name him. At the same time, I realized what a pain it's been trying to find a guy named Kostos here in Greece. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard, but the number of guys I actually asked the name of dwindled after the skeezy ones tried to "ni hao" me. I mean, I had found a Kosta and a Kostis, but...no Kostos. So, instead of relying on luck to find me one, I decided to make my own luck and thus, this cutie here is named Giannis  Kostos Leonidas IV, Giannis because all the men  Marj has met here are named John, Kostos for me, Leonidas for Shivani's chocolate obsession, and IV for the fourth John Marj has met here. So his name is pretty intimidating, but we call him Yanni (after my coworker who's as adorable).

1. Meet someone named Kostos.

After getting Yanni, we headed to one of Santorini's famous black beaches. The beaches are black due to the volcanic rock on the island, and all the beaches in Santorini are black except the Red Beach and the White Beach which are red and white respectively. The thing with the black beach is that as expected, the sand is very hot during the day so that if you don't wear shoes in the sand, you will likely experience pain of some sort on the soles of your feet. Because it was the last beach experience of the summer, we decided to splurge for an umbrella and because we hadn't slept all weekend, a nap. But before we napped, Marj decided she wanted to fly a kite and produced from her backpack, two kites! I tried to help launch them but the wind wasn't having it.

And thus, we relaxed at the beautiful beach. I contemplated getting my henna there on the beach (lots of other people were doing it!) but ultimately felt too gross to do anything of that sort. I still had smoke residue, sulfur residue, and Eos sand residue on me and was sticky from sweat and ocean spray. So I slept. And it was wonderful.

We finally decided to call a cab to take us to the airport and got there around 7:00 for our 8:15 flight. So a little background on the next part of the story: On Friday, there had been a little scare that the air traffic controllers in Athens were going to strike that Sunday, but when the courts deemed it illegal, we thought we were in the clear to come back to Athens all safe and sound that Sunday. And the air traffic controllers are law abiding people so they did not strike that Sunday. They did, however, all call in sick. The message we got at the airport was that "All flights scheduled today will be leaving at midnight. But if the air traffic controllers feel better, maybe we'll go a little earlier."

And so, with four full flights waiting to get out of Santorini, we squatted in that tiny airport with overpriced food and the same sticky air as the ocean with no breeze. But it wasn't that miserable an experience, and definitely not enough to bring down the whole weekend. I finished a book I started around 3 weeks before, David Sedaris's When You are Engulfed in Flames. I highly recommend it, especially for those who share a sense of humor for the daily absurdities of life. It's a good beach read because it's a compilation of short stories so you can read one, take a nap, go swimming, and come back to read another. However, even in the comedy there is a sort of a darkness that...well...you'll just have to read it for yourself.

We didn't make it until midnight. At around 11 PM, our plane took off for Athens and we finally made it back to the apartment, exhausted but pleased with the way the weekend turned out. We went big and now, we get to go home accomplished.

Sat/Sun 7.24-7.25 Part I: Leap Headfirst into a Volcano

Before I start, a note about the next couple of posts:
Our last weekend trip in Greece was a Santorini/Eos island hopping adventure. I hit Santorini early Saturday morning, left at 5 PM to go to Eos, stayed the night in Eos, and went back to Santorini at 10:30 AM the next morning. Thus, this trip will be broken up into 3 parts: Santorini-Eos-Santorini. Enjoy. :)

When people mention island hopping in Greece, there are two islands that they always recommend: Mykonos and Santorini. We went to Mykonos pretty early in the trip but I've been waiting two months to get to Santorini. The problem is, although "island hopping" sounds like it should be a breeze, as if you were simply jumping from stone to stone across a babbling brook, unless you want to carry around all your stuff all day and sleep in dubious places (like mosquito-infested beaches) at night, it's important to plan ahead. That, and the fact that islands are farther away from each other than you might think. For instance, Santorini is about 10 hours away by ferry that usually either runs super early in the morning, or around midnight and the ferry tickets cost around 80 Euro round trip. Thus, we thought it would be easier and cheaper to fly, given our friends at Aegean Airlines. Because of scheduling (people's families were in town) and availabilities of flights, however, the trip kept getting pushed back and back and back. At the time, even when the change in schedule freed up other weekends for me to do things like go to Rome or Rhodes or see Lysistrata at Epidaurus, it was still incredibly frustrating because I would get all excited to go to Santorini (to the squeal while jumping up and down point) only to be let down. Over and over and over again. That being said, going to Santorini this weekend was an epic last trip in Greece, a great way to end a summer abroad and get ready to go back home and back to school. Super. Epic. Awesome.

I had it in my mind for the longest time that Santorini would be a lot like Mykonos, same blue and white houses, same kind of beaches, same nightlife, etc, probably because everyone groups them together as Must-See-Greek-Islands. I should know by now that every island has its own personality and own flair. And here's what I learned about Santorini:

The islands in the Santorini island group were once one big round island that contained a huge volcano. But one huge eruption caused the volcano to collapse in on itself and form the famous Santorini caldera. I had once thought that the caldera was on Santorini itself and that if you wanted to see the sunset from it, you would have go somewhere in Santorini and climb the caldera and watch the sun set. But actually, all of the island of Santorini [the big island] is part of the caldera, as you can see from the map to the right. Water rushed in when the volcano collapsed and flooded the caldera, forming the island chain we know today. In the middle is what's left of the volcano, part of which is still active and last erupted in the 1950s. And along the whole island are cliffs which give great views of the sunset, making Santorini one of the most romantic of the Greek islands. Thus, to party, go to Mykonos. To get married, go to Santorini.

So! How was my trip? Well, Liz and I took one of those 5:30 AM flights again on Saturday morning to get to Santorini and were able to see the sun rise, again. By the time, we met up with Marj, Shivani, and Ray, who had gotten in the day before, it was breakfast time and we stopped by a little convenience store to pick up some goods where I found...

Yummm. I ate them on the beach later in the weekend and they were delicious. Nothing was too overpowering and everything blended together wonderfully and really, munching while watching the ocean is the best way to eat them. Nom.

5. Buy honey-roasted peanuts coated in sesame seeds in Santorini.

 -> The Volcano

We decided a little while before we left for the island that we would love to go see this volcano, located in the middle of the caldera. It's a short boat ride away and we opted to do a combination volcano/hot springs tour [you can only do it via tour boat, as far as I can tell] for 20 Euro. The boats sail from the Old Port and there are three ways to get there: by cable car, by donkey, or by walking [through donkey poop]. Now, I admit that I had not done the most thorough research about Santorini, but I did hear that one of the great things to do was to take the cable car down and the donkey up, unless you really wanted to slug through poop either way. What I had not anticipated was how far down we had to go to get there. Well, really, how far up, then down we had to go. Because Santorini is basically a lot of cliffs, to get to the cable car, we had to walk up a hill. But it was so worth it.

Loading up:

Going down!

The view was absolutely stunning, especially to my sleep-deprived brain, and since we were running short on time, it was a great way to get to the Old Port quickly. At Old Port, we got on a pirate ship...

and headed off toward this here volcano.

Don't be fooled by the seemingly flatness of this island. The thing actually rises 1200 meters up and yeah, I walked all the way up. The ground is volcanic rock worn down by the winds to a gravel-like consistency so walking up the volcano was like walking up a sturdy pebbly mountain, if that makes any sense. The island was very solid, but the paths were pretty steep, so in each step, I would sink my feet into the gravel and use that to hold my feet in, preventing me from sliding back down. Finally, I got to the top to the King George crater (or some crater named after him), the active part of the volcano and the view from the top was so worth the hour climb it because with a 360 turn, you get to see the entire caldera.

After a quick romp back down the volcano, our tour took off for the hot springs on a nearby island. Little did I know that the boat would drop us off a little ways away from the island and we would have to swim to the hot springs!

This was the helm of our boat. See that brown murkiness with people's heads poking out? That's the hot springs, full of minerals like sulfur, copper, and iron, and a mud that is super exfoliating and therapeutic for the skin. The problem? I'm a terrible swimmer, especially in the ocean. I have no upper body strength, no endurance, and can't tread water all that well. Now, if I swam under water for most of the journey, I could probably make it to the hot springs, but I also have sensitive eyes which don't like water in them, especially salty water, and without goggles, I mostly have to keep my head above water and paddle my way there. Did I mention I have no abdominal muscular definition either?

Regardless, I was "peer pressured" (in quotes because I didn't need much convincing to get out of the heat and jump into the cool caldera waters). Still, with all that's said above, I struggled to make it to the hot springs. Liz was a life saver (literally) and walked me through it. But yeah, we all made it there, bathed in the decently warm, but not too warm springs, covered ourselves in mud (Ray grew his first mustache), and came out better for it. There aren't any pictures of us covered in mud because 1) we had to swim there and 2) the mud all washed off by the time we got back to the boat. The remnants of the iron/copper/sulfur stayed on us and got most of our clothes red (luckily, I was wearing black), but the experience was one of the most worthwhile things I've done in Greece. Two thumbs up and a recommendation for anyone visiting the Greek islands.

We make it back to port, a little sadly, and it's time to make it back to Fira. Now, Ray, Liz, and I took the cable car down, so we felt it was only prudent that we took donkeys up. It was a great trip. Ray's donkey kept stalling and letting people pass him and although mine liked to hug the edge a bit too much, I had a lot of fun, alternating watching other people's donkeys be obstinate  with them and seeing the view get better and better as we got higher. Let me say that it's very hard to get a good picture when you're on a donkey so although we switched cameras, there weren't very many great pictures of me. But I like this one because my sunglasses are glinting and it looks like I'm wearing a tiara.

8. Donkey Trail in Santorini

*feels a little bit like a princess*

Next entry: Eos. Stay tuned.