James & Heather Travelogues

As the date came closer and closer and the weather got progressively worse; I was seriously contemplating pulling out due to "illness". Nevertheless, on the day we were due to set off, I got in the car. The journey down was uneventful and the weather looked as if it was going to clear up... Fat chance, within 24 hours it was pouring down; by the end of the week our campsite was a swamp (not helped by a farmer pulling out stuck cars with his tractor and chewing up the ground in the process). The rain by itself wasn't too bad, but it was also windy with it - I thought I was going to develop trench foot at one point and I ended up chucking a load of clothing that was damaged by the rain.

Still there was the beer to keep me sane...

By the Thursday, the large majority of our guests had arrived. We had given advance notice to all that there would be a combined Hen's & Stag's night before we left Australia, but as we did not know Santorini at all, we had to pick a bar after we arrived.

The bar for the guys was the Tropical Bar, where Jeannie played host. Kick off time was 3pm and we had booked the balcony out, so we were able to sink a few while the sunset over the caldera. It all started rather civilised, but things rapidly degenerated once the tequila shots started flowing... Several times that night, my camera was dropped much to my consternation.

Eventually, the more senior members of the group and those with young children had to leave and at that point, the ladies joined what was left of guys. Jeannie had ordered in some snack food for us and was pumping cheesie music through the speakers), so naturally bad dancing was the order of the day/night.

The end of the night came for Heather and I at around 2am. Of the 40 or so people that had joined us, only one (our Danish friend Kenneth) was left. We headed of to a snack bar and bought the customary kebab, except in Greece it is called an Eros (and the Greek way of spelling it, makes it look like Gyro). While in the eros shop (which sounds as if it should be selling something else), we saw Jeannie as she had finished her shift at Tropical. Then off home to bed...

Most of this day was spent hanging around at the beach in Vlihada. The reason that this was chosen was because it is home of the Santorini Submarine. Heather and I decided to take a ride on this, along with some of my family and Col.

The submarine tour started at a secluded port and chugged to open waters before descending. While underwater, we were "treated" to a 15th century sunken wreck of a small boat (complete with drive shaft), a couple of ancient containers and an Ionic column that was about 3 feet tall (obviously from a temple for midgets).
You can probably tell, that I thought that part of the ride was slightly touristy. However, the experience of submerging was quite surreal, and I naturally played the role of a tacky tourist well, by videoing everything. For future reference, if filming underwater, switch off the auto-exposure on your camera and adjust it manually - it allows you to see the underwater environment much more clearly (you may want to turn off auto-focussing as well).

After the spending the day at the beach, we headed off to Ia. Ia is supposed to be the place to watch a sunset from in Santorini and as we got there, it was obvious that a lot of people knew this, as the place was heaving with tourists. Heather, Hazel, Mike and I found a spot reasonably high up the caldera and watched the sunset. Although nice to look at, it was pretty similar to the one that we experienced at hotel, so it was slightly disappointing in that regard.

However, there was a slightly surreal experience, as most of the tourists around us applauded when the sun went down. Now, I am all for giving praise where it is due, but this is something that happens daily and (unless the Santorini local government knows something that rest of the planet does not) is a natural event with no human involvement. The question still remains though: "who were the crowd applauding?". I have been thinking about it and come up with the following:

• Someone was bungie-jumping off the edge of the caldera, and we did not see it
  
• The blokes were pleased that they could now get to a bar and sink a few Mythos
  
• There was a sweepstake running as to how far down the sun would go, and someone guessed "below the sky" correctly
  

After sun down, we called Col and he joined us for dinner, having received excellent directions from me ("we are in a restaurant overlooking the caldera" - this meant he only had to search about 30 instead of 35). Later on in the evening, my mum and dad joined us for dinner as well, which rounded off a pleasant evening. Again, they got fantastic directions from me ("we're near a church" - every town in Santorini has at least half a dozen, probably more).

Must remember to applaud the sunrise in the morning...