Santorini

Santorini derives its name from Saint Irene. It is also known as Thira, which is the largest town on the island.



Before about 1400 BCE, Santorini was apparently a prosperous island, an important stopping point for ships trading between Syria-Palestine-Egypt and Greece-Sicily-Italy. It was inhabited by a Minoan like people. Possibly they were Minoans who had settled there from Crete. But on one fateful day, the whole island was blown apart causing most of it to sink into the sea. This fateful volcanic explosion also blew apart Minoan civilization because Knossos was destroyed by the tsunami which followed the volcanic explosion.


Now the island is in the form of a horseshoe, with a couple of other smaller islands completing a ring, around what is the caldera of the volcano. In the middle is another small island which contains the cone of the present volcano. I have seen photographs of steam emerging from it, so it is still active. Earth quakes are quite common on the island, which is amazing given how some of the houses perch on the very edge of the precipices forming the walls of the caldera. The last serious earthquake was in the 1950s and it destroyed over 50% of the houses on the island. Remarkably only forty odd people were killed. Apparently the quake struck when most people were out working in the fields.

That certainly wouldn’t be the case today for the island is given over to tourism, one hundred percent. It is one of those places which now seem to belong to the world as a whole rather than being simply a Greek island. In the winter when it is wet and very windy – the winds are so strong that in the vineyards on the island the vines are not trained to grow upward but rather spread along the ground - there are only about 15,000 people on the island. This swells to well over a hundred thousand in the tourist season. Every day in the season – Easter to the end of October- cruise ships, often several a day, deposit thousands of visitors. From Thira one can look down and see the lighters plying back and forth from the cruise ships to the shore, along with quite a number of luxury yachts and cruisers of the rich and famous.




Besides the very large yachts with no sails of the type we see in Victoria (Barbra Streisand, Paul Allen etc.) we saw a number of four-masted sailing ships which seem to be the latest toy of the very rich. These are not like the traditional tall ships. Rather they are sleek, modern looking vessels, with four of five yard arms on each mast. I would guess that the sails are raised and lowered by some automatic system, because there is no evidence of ropes and rigging. I have no idea to whom the ones we saw belong – perhaps Madonna or Clint Eastwood? Mohamed El Fayad or Silvio Berlosconi, with Tony Blair tagging along for a buckshee holiday? Needless to say we didn’t see of the these (un)worthies, not being able to afford the kind of restaurants and establishments that they would patronize.
One can hear every language spoken on Santorini – lots of Spanish, French and Italian, but also Japanese and a surprising amount of Chinese (they are becoming what the Japanese were in the 80’s in the world of tourism). There was also a lot of Russian spoken, mostly tourists but also people working in the service industries. The landlady of the lovely little Sunrise Pension where we stayed was Russian, now married to a Greek and with a 12-year old daughter. When I asked if she came to Santorini as a tourist and loved it so much she couldn’t leave, she said no, she came there to work. She was a delightful person, about 40 years old and very helpful. When we left, she embraced Judy – and we had only stayed there for one night and two days.


On the tour we took there was a large group of Slovenians, with their own guide. Many of the tour boat passengers seemed to be Americans (d’un certain age). But there were also lots of rich Italians, French and Greeks around. Of course there are lots of shops and amenities to help all of the punters to lighten their wallets. But the general tone of the island seems quite laid back. The basic kindness and decency of the Greeks hasn’t been completely occluded by the presence of so much money around.


The restaurants and cafes overlooking the caldera are of course the most expensive. But even so in a couple of places where we went, they were in no hurry to move us out to make way for other punters. In the first place we sat for about an hour and a half after lunch and did some sketching. On the second day after we had checked out of our pension, we went to another place for coffee and stayed to do watercolurs and drawing. We worked for 2 ½ hours or so, and then had lunch, and then stayed an hour or so longer. All in all we occupied prize seats, up against the glass railing that was all that stood between the terrace and the shore 200 feet below, for about four hours, spending in total about 60 euros. Nobody seemed to mind. In fact the waiters kept coming by to assess progress, and one took photos of our work when we left.


The village of Oia, at the northern tip of the island is perhaps the most photogenic part of the island, largely because the old part of the village has only narrow lanes and no cars. Many of the pictures one sees on calendars and tourist brochures are from here. It is supposed to be the best place from which to observe the sunset on the island. There were many, many tourists crowded into the area of the old Venetian fortress, waiting for the sunset. But on the night we were in Oia it failed to perform, going behind a cloud bank before reaching the horizon. We saw it from the terrace of a tavern, where we were waiting with some anxiety for our souflakia to arrive. We had to be back at the bus by 9:00 pm. We ordered around 8:15 and got our drinks and salad and bread promptly – mopping up the oil from a Choriatiki salad with Greek bread is one of life’s real pleasures – but it took longer for the next course. By 8:35 we explained to the waiter that we were in a bit of a hurry, but when it still hadn’t arrived by 8:45 we cancelled the order and paid for what we had consumed. Of course the staff were extremely apologetic, but in fairness to them the place was very busy. However food usually comes so promptly in Greece that any wait at all comes a s a surprise. We just made it back to the bus, but we were the last of the group to arrive.


We left the island by the M.V Prevellis, at about 1:30 a.m. We werer very tired by the time we got aboard. We waited around in the port for 2-3 hours watching the Italy-Paraguay game (which seemed to be played at a great pace), reading and drinking beer. We werer very pleased though with the cabin we had. It was “Lux” class, even though it only cost 71 euros each for a journey lasting 15 hours. We had two bunks, a sitting area, with TV and a shower/toilet. It was not the newest ship I have ver been on but it was comfortable and not crowded. The ship stopped at Iraklion and Sitia in Crete (while we slept), Kalos and Kalmyros and then finally at Rhodes about six in the evening.
By the way the ship’s name Prevellis refers to the monastery on the south coast of Crete where many Commonwealth soldiers found refuge in WWII following the Battle of Crete (see Chania blog).