Swimming, Sunset, and Santorini Mou

Our second day in Santorini was one of my favorite days in our entire trip.

The day before, we had booked a boat tour of Santorini´s volcano, so we got up early and headed to the bus stop.

Back down around the curves on the island cliffs, we arrived at the port and boarded our boat. They would first sail out to the volcano, where we would be able to hike, and then to the hot springs so we could swim in them.



The little island where the dormant volcano sits is one of the dryest places I have every been to. And I live in Arizona´s ¨dry heat.¨ Just rocks and rocks and more rocks and dirt.

But, in it´s own way, it was beautiful.

The island terrain consisted primarily of craters and hills that formed because of the caved-in land. Different shades of black, grey, brown and red surrounded us, and as we hiked up to the highest point (which isn´t that high in the air) the wind just overtook us.

People literally had to brace themselves when standing in one place so as not to fall over. It was like riding the metro in Paris...if you can´t grab onto railing somewhere, you´ve got to take a stance that will keep you upright as the cars jerk forward.

But it was great, and we were completely surrounded by deep, blue ocean.

We couldn´t wait to swim in the springs.



Everyone boards the boat again, and they continue around to another side of the volcano where the hot springs are located. The springs are surrounded on three sides by the volcano, and it´s too shallow near the springs for the boat to sail right up next to them. So instead, the boat anchors about 30-40 yards away from the entrance to the springs and the captain tells us to jump in.

Bombs away!

We throw off our cover-ups, leaving our things behind and free fall into the ocean. That jump into the salt water below was, by far, one of the coolest things I have ever done. And the rush of water felt great.

And then we swam into the springs. The color of the water quickly morphs from a deep blue to a rusty brown, and suddenly you feel the ocean floor beneath you.

We thought the springs would be hot, but they were lukewarm, which actually made the transition back into the cooler, open ocean a lot easier.

The mud in the springs is supposed to create miracles and heal sickness and so on and so forth. I´m not sure that we were witnesses to anything spectacular, but it was an amazing experience nonetheless.

And then we swam back through the ocean and treaded water while people in front of us boarded the boat again, bobbing up and down with the waves.

Back in town, our first order of business is to snag a quad. We needed to use to to drive up to Oia to watch the amazing sunset that locals buzz about. The guy who loans out the quad tells us that we should also head out to Kamari to see the beach and eat lunch at on of the restaurants there. Sounds like a plan.

Now, just to be clear, in Santorini there are, more or less, five ways to get around. By car, by foot, by moped, by bus, or by quad. Walking to the tip of the island is not the most time efficient option, and mopeds can only be rented by those holding international licenses (which probably also holds true for cars). And we´d pretty much covered the bus riding. But I would say about 60% of the people on the road are using mopeds or quads. So it´s a pretty common thing on the island.

The scary part about this is realizing how fast you have to drive on a quad to keep up with regular traffic. And the even scarier part is discovering the sharp twists and turns of the roads.
Well, well, life is an adventure!

We zoom down to Kamari and...WOW. Welcome to paradise. It was the icing on the cake, truly. I didn´t even know that places that beautiful actually existed. In the words of Will Ferrell, it was ¨mind-bottling.¨

We parked our little yellow quad in the line of mopeds (ugh, lucky Europeans) and sat down at a restaurant right off of the beach. Clear blue water, people laying out among the cabanas, soft music at the restaurant, greek salad, calamari and wine. Like I said, welcome to paradise.

After a late lunch, we layed in the lawn chairs on the beach, reading and napping until it was time to head back toward town.

We zipped to our hotel on our newly purchased mode of transportation, cleaned up from our salty morning swim, and headed to the northernmost point on the island for sunset.

There is just something so incredible about watching the sun disappear over the ocean water. Slowly, the radiant circle is interrupted by a straight edge, eventually becoming a half-circle, moving until the last sliver of light disappears completely, leaving only shades of red, violet and indigo behind as evidence that the sun had shone that day.

We hopped back on our quad and drove down the road a bit to take more photos of the amazing blue and white haciendas that characterize Santorini.
And then it was dinner time.