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Seeing Jen & Pete are co-stars of this blog, I thought I'd use their new favourite photo as todays picture.
Well once again, another beautiful day in Santorini ... started with another gourmet breakfast by Pedro on our deck watching Santorini come to life.
Surprisingly there were no cruise ships in port today ... a pleasant change from the 9 that were in yesterday with the million tourists on board (notice how after 3 days in town, we now consider ourselves locals and find the 'tourists' a major inconvenience) Of course our ability to speak fluent Greek and our naturally tanned skin and dark hair helps us blend right in .. NOT!
Today we decided to do a cruise around the islands seeing all the normal touristy things. So we headed down the stairway to hell (oops ... sorry stairway to the harbour) ... limping and groaning the whole way, the pain from the previous days descent down the mountain all too fresh in our minds and calves. Pete, Jen & myself could only imagine how painful it was for Richie seeing he'd also done the 'stairmaster extreme course' yesterday having walked not only down but up as well. Of course there wasn't a lot of sympathy as it was only his mule like stuborness that got him into the situation in the first place (but a good effort anyway darlin xxx)
Once at the bottom we were faced with the tough choice of a genuine replica wooden tall boat filled with hundreds of loud americans tourists, or George!
George had his genuine little wooden boat that carries (oddly enough) 4 passengers comfortably.
Surprisingly we chose .... GEORGE!!
So out to sea we headed, following the 3 or 4 genuine replica tall ships carrying hundreds of loud americans (and of course other quieter nationalities), all the time thinking what a great decision we had made
Imagine a bus tour filled with tourists jumping off at every major attraction, stampeding through it, taking photos and then jumping back on it in time for it to screech out of the car park onto the next attraction. Now imagine that same bus but with sails ... and obviously no wheels and that is what it was like .. .complete with the screeching out of each port to the next attraction ... these genuine replica tall ships can certainly move!!
George took us to the volcano - an island in the middle of the bay - apparently its the worlds largest active volcano, or at least so Dragonia our beautiful Serbian waitress told us.
Seriously though everyone ... if this is the largest active volcano in the world, save your money and go for the largest non active volcano in the world!!
After walking uphill in the heat over black rocks with the gratuitous hundreds of loud american tourists (herein referred to as 100LAT), my theory of "If there was anything worth seeing, they would have built a road and a carpark to it" was proven correct!! I think the term 'Active' may have been a stretch of the imagination .. perhaps flatulous would have been a more accurate description.
Obviously the worlds largest flatulous volcano wouldn't attract as many tourists, but it would have been closer to the truth So having slogged it out just to see some pits in the ground with some sulphurus farts coming out of it, we headed back down.
A special mention goes to Jen, who given her dodgey hip (and no, its not due to her age!!) made it all the way to the top ... well done babe xx
Back on board our little boat with George we pottered round to the Hot Springs ... an interesting little place that again is filled with 100LAT swimming and dog paddling their way up stream to a shallow brown sludgey area that the we all sat in, enjoying the warmth of the sulphurous farts being aerated through the sea. Strangely enough, you didn't realise how warm those little bursts of smelly air actually were until you swam back out to sea to reboard the boat.
The water is so crystal clear and DEEP here though ... George advised that the deepest part of the bay is over 400m deep, with the place that the cruise ship sank being 200m deep. You'd have to think the captain had been pretty unlucky to sink by hitting rocks in 200m deep water [hum music to the titanic here ...]
Getting back to our boat we watched George fish for what he called 'groper' with bread on hooks using a traditional bamboo rod. Now being Australian, you're probably thinking 'groper' ... they start at about 1m long ... not these ones!! The grandaddy gropers were about 5cms long with the bubbies being about 2 cms long. So with George having caught his afternoon snack we headed back to Santorini, catching the cable car back up the mountain before heading back to the villa to shower, grab a nanna nap and then head back to our favourite bar ... the 'Vertigo Bar'.
By the time we got to the bar, we'd noticed that pete had managed to turn about 5 shades darker just from his time in the sun on the boat and is definitely looking like a native (as if it was possible for the Greek God to look any more handsome ... needless to say Jen is feeling quite chuffed walking around on Petes arm)
It's amazing how different the sun is here ... we were out in it for about 4 hours in the middle of the day .. it was VERY hot, but none of us got burnt ... imagine doing that in Australia in summer ... we'd be dead of sun stroke
We have new best friends at the bar called Dragonia and Yanis who kindly but unfortunately have been showing the depth of our newly formed friendship with free drinks ... shooters to be correct ... like we needed any more alcohol.
Perhaps this could explain the missing time between 6pm and 11:30pm last night
Thats it for now .. photos will be up soon
Jacq, Richie, Jen & the Greek God Pete xxx
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