Last Day Santorini

Pictures: From bottom to top

Keith about to get back on the ship.... "hot springs" in the background cove

Feeling the heat of the volcano in a shallow hole

Christina on the volcano

Eating pita bread with tzakiki

A plate of dolmanthes

Kalamari and more tzakiki

Donkey ride up the cliff

Sunset

Cathedral in Fira

Fira town...see cathedral in town

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You know you are in Greece when:
1) You walk out your hotel room door and the first thing you see is a donkey
2) At the police station, the officers are busy cooking a lamb on a spit.

Today was our last day in Santorini. We awoke to nice weather and after breakfast we met our bus for our volcano tour. The boat was like a pirate boat. It wasn’t as big as I thought it was so needless to say…Gravol was the saving grace of the day!

We first sailed to the nearby volcano where we hiked to the summit and the crater. This volcano is not like what we traditionally think of when we think of volcanoes. In the dome or cone shaped volcanoes, lava gently spews out of the crater as pressure builds. In this volcano, pressure builds and builds until it can’t anymore and then it explodes with great force. Lava, gas, and big chunks of rock fly into the air. It is similar to Mount St. Helens volcano.

The last time this volcano exploded was in 1956 and it destroyed the towns of Fia and Oia across the caldera sea. There are monitors all over the volcano monitoring it. They think that they can predict when it will explode a few months to a year in advance. They figure that it will be ready to explode within the next 20 years. Maybe we won’t be coming back for our 20th anniversary!
On many parts of the volcano you could see steam rising. Our guide told us that if we dug down 30 cm into the ground….it would be hot enough to boil an egg! Wow! You could also smell the sulfuric gases. The entire volcano top was covered by pumice and dense black rock. Sometimes the rocks were red and other times they appeared yellow from the sulfur.

Once back on the boat, we sailed across from the volcano to the “hot springs” heated by the volcano. We were expecting hot tub water…but instead the water was at most 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the sea. The sea is quite warm so the warmest warmer in the springs was like room temperature water. We had to swim 30 metres from the boat in 6 metre water to reach the springs. We swam for about 25 minutes and then boarded the boat. The water in the springs was yellow from the sulfur but the smell was not strong at all.

From the springs we sailed to the island of Thirissia….a part of Santorini formed from the explosions from the volcano. We stopped in an old fishing village full of restaurants. 170 stair steps above was the village. We stayed in the fishing village and enjoyed Greek fast food….Gyros in a Pita along with French fries, and two colas. The Gyros was pita bread filled with chicken (a big piece of chicken was on a vertical spit and the cook kept slicing pieces off as they were done), French fries, tomatoes, onions, tzakiki sauce, and spices. Sounds kind of weird but very tasty! We also enjoyed gelato…icecream…before boarding the boat.

We were then dropped off at the Old Santorini Port called Fira Skala where we road donkeys up to the cliff tops. Christa, neither of us rode your donkey….our donkeys stayed close the walls instead of the cliff edge!

We then went and took pictures of the large white washed church and bought some chocolate banana cream pastry from the bakery before watching the sunset. Today was a much clearer day than when we were in Oia. They are not kidding when they say that the sun plunges into the sea.

We enjoyed our pastry and some of our Vin Santo vine and now we are doing a little packing. If we are hungry when we are finished, we may head to the restaurants to find some Greek appetizers….kalamari with tzakiki (fried squid with a sauce made from cucumbers and something else) or dolmanthes (rice wrapped in grape vine leaves covered with a lemon sauce). We are slowly trying more and more Greek dishes. Keith ate lamb again last night and I tried Moussaka (eggplant, potato, and ground meat cooked like a lasagna).

Tomorrow we are leaving in the morning for a ferry to Mykonos. It is hard to believe that we are visiting our last island. Time sure flies when you are having a great time.
Hope everyone is well at home. Take care!
C