To the beach

Slept in missing the sunrise over the Mediterranean whilst listening to the ringing of the church bells– still, we had breakfast overlooking the sea with those mystical islands in clear view. A beautiful start to the day. We then trudged up the road to catch our bus to Kamari, which is nestled at the base of large mountains (not in the caldera) has black sand and pebbles, heaps of tourists, the inevitable tourists shops, selling exactly the same stuff as everywhere else.

The water was warm and clear, so we all had a swim and then a wander around the shops and town trying to find the best place to have lunch (Gyros of course) whilst fighting off the spruikers trying to lure us into their “fabulous” establishments. Fabulous means expensive – The word from the locals is that the introduction of the Euro has made prices go up enormously, much to the dislike of the people not making more money from it. Tourism is booming although the GFC has apparently had an impact.
Our pension in Karterados is decent hike from the bus routes. On the way we get to walk past the police station. It’s comforting to see they have a guard out the front wielding a machine gun. Nice to know that someone is likely to attack the police and the best way of stopping them is hail of bullets. Victoria Police should get these instead of Tasers – it would make them far more effective. The flat price on the buses has Dad annoyed in that it costs 5.60 euro to get the family to the other side of the island the same as it costs to get them up to Thira which is 2 minutes away.
After our short bus trip to Thira, we walked around the narrow streets lined with (yep you guessed it) more shops selling tourist stuff. Admittedly some of these were pretty upmarket. We hung around and took the mandatory snaps of the town on top of the cliffs and had a drink watching the fading sun slowly change the colours of the buildings. The Caldera is huge – the explosion must’ve been awesome (somewhat bigger that the 5.1 earthquake we experienced last night).
On the long walk back to our village we got to see some traditional Greek folk dancing in the main square of Thira (no grap this time) and some not so traditional (for Santorini at least) traffic dodging. It really is chaotic and dangerous – much better when they just had donkeys - and drachmas’ to pay for them.