Today I have been awed, amazed and bedazzled by Santorini's caldera and the towns that cling to its rim. Lauren and I arrived in Santorini yesterday afternoon after a three hour ferry journey from the sleepy island of Paros. It rained heavily soon after we arrived at our hostel near Perissa Beach and we were confined to the breezy patio of our hotels for over an hour as the rain turned the road into a temporary watercourse and the wind whipped the clean sheets that some poor soul had hung out to dry.
We woke this morning to find sun streaming through the diaphanous curtains of our hostel room, a welcome development. After buying a cheap breakfast from a nearby bakery, we caught a bus to Fira, the largest town on the island. We panted as we walked up the steep hill from the bus station, not knowing what we would find at the top.
A spectacular view was waiting to meet us as we walked along the pedestrian track. To our right were a series of shops selling tourist paraphenalia emblazoned with the word "Santorini". To our left was a sheer drop to the ocean. We were standing on the rim of the caldera, looking out across the deep blue of the Agean, which stretched to the horizon.
The natural beauty was breathtaking but it was Fira's architecture that was most overwhelming. Whitewashed geometric buildings clung to the edges of the caldera, teetering on the very brink. From a distance it looked as if some large dice had been tossed carelessly close to the edge of the cliff and had become stuck in the rock just before toppling over. Most remarkable was the way in which the buildings seemed to be stacked on top of one another. It truly was a spectacular sight.
We wandered northwards through the town along a track that seemed to be slipping over the edge of the rim. Unfortunately for the shop owners, the view to our left was commanding rather more of our attention than their tasteless souvenirs. As we walked on the view back towards the town become increasingly sublime, the white of the buildings interspersed only by the blue domes of tiny churches. Just below us we could see the roofs of luxury hotels, their rooms built into the cliff face. Santorini is renowned as one the best destinations to honeymoon and it was easy to understand the appeal; the views these hotels command defy description.
The island of Santorini resembles a sickle in shape and in the centre of the crescent lie three small islands. It is here that the volcano is at its most active. In fact, at the island of Palia Kameni, it is possible to swim in hot springs and have a mud bath. The cliffs that tumble down to the sea are ragged and tattered, having been formed when part of the island sheared off and plunged into the sea around 3 500 years ago, destroying the Minoan civilization on the island.
Feeling energetic and encouraged by the goading sun, we decided to walk along the cliff tops to Oia, the vowely town on the northern tip of the sickle. The walk had only been mentioned in one of our travel guides and we were hoping that it would be worth it. It certainly was!
As we walked further from Fira it was possible to gain a sense of scale: the buildings became smaller and the plunging cliff face somehow seemed to gain height as we moved away from it. The track we walked along was well travelled but was pebbly and snaked its way along the very edge of the caldera, affording superb views in all directions. Though the weather was warm, the cool breeze that clambered up the cliff face from the sea cooled us; it also enabled a raptor to hang as if suspended from above, its wings hardly beating as it rode the updraft and soared away above us before swooping down to the ground at a dizzying speed.
The track took us up and down steep hills. The soil around us changed colour from a dark black to a rusty red, the result of the volcanic origins of the island. At one point the tracked dipped down to the roadway below before rising again and we walked up a steep slope to discover an isolated church that clung to the edge of the cliff.
Oia finally came into view. Like Fira, the buildings seemed to be tumbling down the cliff face, defying gravity. We walked down a slope from another small church to the town, suddenly finding ourselves amongst swarms of tourists once again. We had only seen a few others on the track and it was disappointing to once again confront humanity after such a sublime relationship with the beauty of the cliffs and sea.
