Santorini Day 3

August 6th, 2010

Sunshine peeping through the shutters of our Cycladic style hotel room. Outside it was already hot at 9AM. We had breakfast with the large crowd in the restaurant. Then I walked the 10 minutes into Fira to find a rental car. At the second place I entered, they found me a Nissan Micra, automatic, AC 4 door for the day. I negotiated the traffic after putting in gas (you get it empty) and went back to El Greco. We stocked up the car with water and stuff and headed down the road along the caldera rim and then to Pyrgos, a village with a small ”castle” at the top and alleyways circling the hillside. We had complaints about the heat but the views over the lower part of the island were worthwhile. Slowly this town was being revitalized with small hotels and apartments. Handicrafts and cafes were the usual merchants.

Perissa's black sand

We didn’t explore Pyrgos as much as we should because of the heat, so we got back in the car and drove through the lowlands to Perissa, one of the two towns with black sand/lava beaches. When I was last there more than thirty years ago, there were few facilities or restaurants and you just put your towel down and hoped not to fry. Now, there are lots of small hotels, beachside restaurants and cafes as well as music bars. The beach is lined by the usual array of umbrellas and beach chairs. Boards are placed on the sand so you don’t have to walk on it much because you can easily burn your feet from the heat, without shoes or flip flops. The sand was black, the sky blue with occasional wispy clouds and a backdrop of some towering volcanic remnants, so eyes were focused down to the very clear water lapping the shore. The water was refreshing, fairly salty, supporting our buoyancy quite easily. We passed the day swimming, frying and later eating in the beachside restaurant. They had water pipes along the roof line to spray cold mist over the restaurant, making it refreshing. The food was also good, simple but tasty and the beer on draught very refreshing.

Summer afternoon sun brought out the siesta for me while the girls negotiated some purchases from one of the parade of beach vendors. Soon it was time to explore further so we chilled the car out and then drove inland and upwards towards Fira. We stopped twice to tour vineyards as Santorini is known for its wines. The first was a small family vineyard, Gavalas off the road. We thought at first it was just a house, but then we had a tour below ground to the store house, the tanks for fermentation and the bottling room. We sampled two white wines and even Kate tasted and we bought one to take with us. A few kilometres up the road at the head of the cliff was a much larger company, Santo Wines, with a huge tasting area and lookout over the whole caldera. We tasted another wine with a dish of accompanying bread and cheese, while admiring the view. A wedding reception was also ongoing. More photographs and panoramas of the stunning views of the island.

Then we headed back to our familiar El Greco hotel where we had a refreshing swim in one of the four pools. The plan was to head to the northern tip of the island at Ia, to see the famous churches and the sunset. The road was quite mountainous so at one point we turned back thinking we were on the wrong road. However, we were going the right way and the delay caused to miss the sunset. Nausea from the twisty road also changed our plans, so we only explored a little of the village. Like Fira, it is perched on the cliff edge and it also has buildings descending the cliff face, very elegant hotels, restaurants and stores. Unfortunately we could not stay long and we negotiated the 12 km drive back in the dark to our hotel, where we had a late supper sur place. Kate always wanted to eat in the hotel so she had her wish. The girls went to bed and the author started blogging the night away. (I apologise for the lack of photographs yesterday- a poor network connection. )