Donkey Butts & Moon Walks
June 17, 2013
One of the things I have never done in Santorini is visit the caldera. In the center of the Santorini crescent there is an active volcano, which has formed a small island. For 15 euro you can take a three-hour boat tour, which includes an hour and a half jaunt around the caldera and then a half hour swim in some nearby hot springs. Well, at first I thought that we’d be bored on the caldera for a whole hour and a half – wrong! Exploring the caldera is like being on the moon. It’s a completely different environment! There are huge sharp rocks everywhere and massive craters. Sounds terrifying, right? Well, not if you are me and my friend, Josh. That hour and a half on the caldera was the highlight of the trip for both of us. Not only does the caldera give you a stunning view of the cliff and whitewashed towns of Santorini, but it also provides some excellent frolicking terrain. Josh and I sprinted, hopped, and climbed all over the island. It was amazingly fun. I highly recommend it. After a good deal of frolicking and taking goofy Lord of the Rings themed videos it was well past time to walk to the various active craters – so we ran. After being “stuck” in cities for a week and a half I think Josh and I both needed some wide-open spaces and the ability to run freely, especially around a lunar-like landscape. I'm sure we got a lot of "crazy American" looks that day, because we definitely were, but not for the normal reason one would get "crazy American" looks - we were just having too much fun! We even sprinted back to the boat from the craters, passing tons of other tourists in the process and leaping over rocks. Not a bad way to spend an hour and a half! Even if you’re not a huge fan of frolicking I highly recommend taking a trip to the caldera – the views alone are worth it.
Once we arrived back on the main crescent of Santorini it was time to hike back up to the main city, Fira. This sounds like an easy task, but the hike up to Fira involves hundreds of steps and dodging donkey butts and the poo emanating from them. Why donkey butts? Donkeys used to be the traditional mode of transport on Santorini until cars arrived, and are still sometimes used to haul loads, but more often tourists, up from the ports. These donkeys were lined up at the top and bottom of the stairs and men corralling the donkeys were trying to sell you a five-euro donkey ride. There were at least 50 donkeys on these stairs! The stairs are about as wide as a large donkey is long, so with the donkeys “angle parked” along the side of the stairs we were forced to walk past their arses. This was especially terrifying for me since I had been taught never to walk directly behind a horse (watch out – they kick!) and since I had been kicked by a calf while trying to put it back in its pasture and of course standing – stupidly – directly behind it. It was quite the, um, interesting time trying to squeeze past donkey asses on the trek back up the cliff. Luckily neither of us stepped in poop or were pooped on, nor even kicked! Victory! Despite being sweaty, exhausted, and having walked through clouds of flies clustered around the donkey poo piles, it was definitely the best day in Santorini and well worth the encounters with so many four legged friends.
