They say that sailing into the caldera of Santorini at sunset is one of the most magical moments you can have in the Greek islands. I wouldn’t know, since I arrived just after midnight, but I have to say that the view from the rock ledge that I camped on just up the road from the port was pretty spectacular the next morning! Wild camping literally 200m up the steep hill from the port, in such a brazen location could have been a really smart idea, or a really, really insane one, I’m not sure which. But I was out of sight of the main road and nobody bothered me, and to see for the first time at sunrise the amazing volcanic caldera that now forms the harbour of the island of Santorini, is a pretty special way to wake up!
Being a volcanic crater, there is quite a steep road that zig-zags up the hill from the main port, up to the rim edge, and then the cycling around the island is not too bad from there on. The hill gradually sweeps down in every, or you can cycle along the ridgeline and quickly move around the main towns of Thira (Fira) and as far around as Ia (Oia). The island isn’t very big – most of the Greek islands aren’t that big at all – and after dumping my bags in the campsite in Thira, I am able to cycle from one end to the other in a couple of hours. I take it a bit slower of course, and over two days, I do half of the island each day, choosing instead to kick back at the lovely campsite swimming pool with a bar and loads of chill-out music repeating over and over. Perfect to sunbake and make large dents in Tom Clancy’s Rainbox Six.
Cycling into Thira on the first morning I pass a Lidl supermarket. Who would have thought? And the budget supermarket chain is even located in a cool little Greek island-style white domed building. How exciting! I load up on cheap beers and snacks and am well on the way to meeting budget on the islands. I didn’t think it would be this easy! Camping for 10€ per night is not too shabby considering the facilities at the campsite. It’s bordering the off season now, being the first week of September, so prices are starting to dip. Santorini however still buzzes with enough tourists to fill it up, but not make it unbearable. Everywhere on the roads, there are tourists who have hired mopeds or quad bikes to get themselves around the island (lazy buggers). The Greeks may not be too used to cyclists on the roads, but they are used to motorbikes, scooters and such, so it’s not a problem as they are aware to look out for the unexpected small vehicle whizzing by.
On my first day, I check out Thira, a wonderful town typical of the Greek islands; whitewashed stone buildings, blue-domed Byzantine churches and stunning cliff-top views over the caldera. There is an older port at the bottom of the cliff accessible by cable car, where you can get boat tours and transfers out to the newer islands forming in the middle of the harbour. The volcano of Santorini is not exactly dormant, and there are hot springs out there, and the occasional low-level volcanic activity. The current crater was formed somewhere around 3,600 years ago, around the time of the Mycenaean civilization. When it erupts, it erupts spectacularly, but it’s a long way off doing so again in the immediate future apparently.
On the second day, I headed around to Ia, the town on the far north-west tip of the volcanic crater. This is where you want to be for sunset if you can help it, and if you thought Thira was good, the town of Ia has it all over Thira again. Spectacular red cliffs with the white town perched on the cliff-top, spectacular Greek windmills perched on the peak and an uninterrupted view of the setting sun. It’s perfect out there, and probably very romantic if you were to take your sheila out there. If you’re thinking about doing that, then I would recommend it. Stay in Ia, not Thira. Smaller but much better. Head to Thira for some nightlife perhaps. Speaking of which, I did manage to find a bar that sold VB, and so my first Santorini sunset was spent with two stubbies of the amber stuff, overlooking the town from the balcony of the particular taverna.
I stayed an extra day in Santorini, just because I was enjoying the break from moving around all the time. It was good for a change to have ferries to do this for me, so I could afford to relax and tak it easy and have a few beers. Which I did. And I came dangerously close to running out of books to read whilst working on ridding myself of my horrible cycling shorts tan! When it was finally time to move on, I booked an afternoon ferry to Ios, and on the way to the ferry port, went via a few of the traditional settlements across the island. There are many vineyards – interesting how the grapes on the islands aren’t grown on the traditional vine, but they actually ly along the ground. There were plenty of donkeys and old buildings and things to look at. The island itself it very beautiful, probably the most sensational and naturally stunning island of all the ones I visited. But it was time to move on…
I had great expectations of Ios – and so naturally was let down spectacularly. I’ve now learned my lesson, having done the same when I sailed Croatia last year, that you really do need to visit these places during the height of summer. I find it extraordinary that the party islands and beach resorts along the entire Mediterranean simply shutdown after August 31. I mean, it doesn’t make sense, the sun still shines, the weather is beautiful, the water warm and clear, why do all the tourists suddenly bugger off? None-the-less, that’s exactly what they do. The week I arrived at Ios, literally 1200 people apparently had checked out of the Far Out Beach Club resort in a single day. The camp ground was virtually deserted, though plenty of Aussies still occupied the reduced rate bungalows. And that’s an interesting point by the way, no matter which island I visited – I swear that nearly ALL the tourists were Australian. We are clearly the biggest nationality on the islands next to the Greeks who live there, and it’s fair dinkum amazing. The Greeks don’t seem to mind, they understand where the tourist dollars are coming from and there are plenty of Greek family connections to Australia that’s for sure. But it was the same everywhere – Santorini, Ios, Mykonos, Samos… all Aussies. Apparently there are loads of Italians and Scandinavians and Asians during the peak season however. The Aussies just linger longer.
Anyway, back on Ios, I still managed to have a good night. So good in fact that my plans to hit the town never happened. I managed to find a 1.5L bottle of goon at the mini-mart, and drinking at the campsite, I fell in with a few Aussies from the Wollongong area. Merely two hours later, the whole huge bottle of red was gone, I had been handed another two cans of Heineken and then the glasses of ouzo were going around. I never made it out to town. Suffice to say I don’t remember even going to bed. But I have a few interesting photos of me dancing with some angel wing attachments, and girls in bikinis on tables. I remembered talking to one of the girls, Tara. She’d managed to get two nights ‘work’ at one of the club bars in town. Her job was to be one of the ‘podium dancers’, you know the ones who prick tease all the blokes to i) enter the establishment, and ii) spend money on booze until they have worked up enough courage to get on the dancefloor themselves and have a shot at the prize. Little do they know that they will never get anywhere, but that’s what the girls are paid for, and in the end everyone has fun. Good job though if you can get it. I’m probably good looking enough, but maybe not that good a pole dancer (!).
Anyway, the Far Out Beach Club was pretty good. If I went back to Ios I’d definitely stay there again. The beach is literally opposite, and there are apparently four pools. I only saw two, and one was closed (end of season again, doh!). The camping was literally 5€ per night – half the price of Santorini again. And like all the islands, the staple diet consisted of yeeros. I would set my record for the number of kebabs eaten in a single day at my next stop – Mykonos. That’s right, five in a single day – two for brekkie, two for lunch and one for dinner just before jumping on a ferry.
Mykonos was probably a bit better than Ios, simply because when I rocked up at Paradise Beach, the place actually had a bit more of a vibe going for it. I didn’t expect Mykonos to be as much of a party island, but it was actually better and less forced. My fears of encountering an uber-expensive, resort covered island full of stunning, super rich couples and poofs, were unfounded. But what did surprise me was the wind. And then I discovered exactly why the season ends officially on the 31st August. I’m sure there is a name for this wind, though I don’t know what it is. But the locals say it is like clockwork – every year starting around the first week of September, and lasting for two weeks, a gale-force wind will blow through the Mediterranean. It was so strong it literally nearly blew me over in the street more than once, and made cycling around the island somewhat challenging! Thankfully Mykonos was pretty small and everything I wanted to see was close to the main town. Paradise Beach campsite where I stayed wasn’t far from the main town either.
The campsite had it’s own private beach, a nightclub (closed for the season again) but the afternoon beach bar was still in full swing and full of skin-to-skin action. There were some interesting characters revving up the dance floor, including a dark haired Greek woman in metallic briefs, and a muscled-up bloke wearing nothing much at all. There was a kebab shop right next to the beach – part of the resort – which made it easy for me never to really have to leave the place, and I sat by the beach for pretty much an entire 24 hours, swimming, reading my books, watching movies, eating kebabs and drinking a few of the local Mythos beers. The campsite was so windy, that I pretty much didn’t want to go anywhere else but the sheltered beach!
The following day however, I decided that checking out the town centre of Chora was a must-do. Coming into the port of Mykonos and cycling towards Paradise Beach, I’d managed a quick glimpse of what the large town had to offer, and it looked amazing! Apparently the streets were designed in a way so that invading pirates would get lost and confused. Along the foreshore, was a cute little area called Little Venice, named probably because it reminded people of the bigger Venice. Above this on a ridge were five extremely well preserved Greek windmills. An excellent place for them; had their sails been opened, they probably could have produced enough power to supply the whole city with this wind! Unfortunately they were not the power-generating types – more likely they were built a couple of centuries ago to grind wheat.
Wandering the streets of Chora was fabulous. The streets really did make you get kind of lost, and I ended up leaving the bike in one place and exploring without it, as the streets and laneways are quite narrow and stepped in some places. I ate more yeeros kebabs and even did a bit of shopping, breaking out the Oz credit card to buy a lovely pure-white cotton shirt, Greek islander style. Very lovely! It makes a nice change to my bag full of filthy, salty and sweat stained t-shirts. (Note: probably should do a third load of laundry at some point.)
And so I had a fabulous time on the islands. After Mykonos, I caught a rather slow ferry to Samos which got into port around midnight (once again). It was two hours delayed from the winds, couldn’t be helped. But I once again had nowhere to stay, and so just grabbed another yeeros and bunked down on a hill in someone’s driveway, unrolling my sleeping bag over a patch of dirt for the night. Surprisingly, my back no longer gets very sore from sleeping on hard ground. I guess that’s either because I’m getting used to it, or I’ve managed to cripple all the nerves in my back in the process. But anyway, it was a pleasant night’s sleep and in the morning I was immediately heading back to the port for an 8am ferry across to Turkey. Samos was never on my itinerary apart from having to stop there to get one of the few ferries that actually run between Greece and Turkey. Amazingly there are very few, but I guess it has to do with the hassle of maintaining a proper border control. This may change if Turkey ever gets entered into the EU.
So there you have it. The Greek islands are magnificent. The photos I took are sensational, and I’m sure that during the season, the nightlife does live up to it’s reputation! Maybe another day I’ll return to find out. On that note, I’m kind of sad to officially ‘farewell’ the European summer. It’s now September and though it’s still hot where I’m going, there are no more late nights of sunshine, the temps will start to drop and sooner or later, things are gonna start to get pretty miserable. Like in London, where the summer lasts for about three weekends if the poms are having a good year – but hopefully by heading south towards Egypt, I’ll avoid most of the mysery. My friend Alex after all told me in Turkey literally two weeks ago, it was 44 degrees. How bad can it be? The other interesting point is that I’m technically not really in Europe anymore. Once I hit Turkey, it’s bye bye EU, hello Middle East! Howe exciting. Some serious travelling coming up ladies and gentlemen, and hopefully plenty of very interesting blog updates will follow, as I head towards the ultimate goal of at least seeing thirty (30) different countries!
Yamas!
