Our first morning in Santorini was going to be a busy one. We had planned to do the famous Fira-to-Oia walk which is a little more than 10km long. The trail goes along a cliffside with dramatic views of the Aegean Sea and the caldera of a very old volcano.
Our host, Coskun, brought us our breakfast at around 8am. Breakfast was vegan pancakes with agave syrup, dakos (Greek rusks with toppings of capers, olives, cucumbers and tomatoes), toast with homemade PB & strawberry jam and lime/mint infused watermelon juice. Everything was delicious and very, very filling. Since we knew we had a strenuous day in front of us, we didn't mind stuffing ourselves before heading out. We sat out in the balcony and had breakfast and then got ready quickly.
It turned out that the narrow alley/lane that we went on the previous evening would eventually become the trail to Oia. So, we headed out of the hotel and made our way back through the narrow alleys and reached a lane that would also take people to the steps that lead down to the old port of Fira. There are two small towns we pass through on the way from Fira to Oia - Firostefani and Imerovigli. Both are very pretty, scenic towns with houses built on a hillside. Almost every house is either a hotel or an Airbnb. Some of them have infinity pools but all of them are usually guaranteed an astounding view of the caldera and the Aegean Sea. We pass through Firostefani and Imerovigli within the first 3-4 km and then it's a relatively brutal 6+km walk with no respite from the sun and difficult terrain to traverse through.
In Imerovigli, there is a fork at which we had the option of visiting a place called Skaros Rock. According to Wikipedia, Skaros Rock is a "large rock promontory" caused most likely by volcanic activity. During the trip planning phase, I had explored the possibility of hiking to Skaros Rock but gave up on that plan when I found out that it involved climbing down 300 steps, then climbing up about 200 steps on Skaros Rock and then optionally climbing down another 200 steps to a small church on the other side of Skaros Rock. And, of course, the same number of steps while returning to the Fira-Oia trail so we could resume our trek to Oia. However, when we approached the fork, we debated giving it a shot. We started the climb down the first set of 300 steps but after seeing how steep the first set of 100 steps were, I had serious misgivings about doing it because we still had 6+ km to go on the Fira-Oia trail. So, we ended up taking a few selfies with Skaros Rock in the background and headed back up to resume our trek to Oia. We would have to defer our trek to Skaros Rock to a future trip to Greece, if and when it happens.
As we left Imerovigli behind us, the trail started to become more rough. The cobblestones gave way to rough gravel, or mix of gravel and rocks. The inclines became steeper (both upwards and downwards) and there were few to no houses. On the other hand, we started getting unobstructed views of the caldera and the sea. The Aegean Sea features a very different shade of blue-green than anything we had seen before and it made for a lot of ooh and aah moments.
We had packed two bottles of water to keep us hydrated on the way and we needed every bit of it even though there was a stiff breeze blowing all the time that made it feel slightly cooler than the actual temperature (high 80s). The trail was quite busy in both directions but we were regularly being overtaken by younger people who were probably in much better physical condition than we were. In all, we took about 3.5 hrs to complete the entire trail and reached Oia at around 12:30pm. We came to a bus stop which we thought was the main Oia bus station but was actually just a local bus stop. We waved down a public bus that was actually heading towards Oia's main bus station which we realized only later. The conductor gave us our tickets but told us that we would have to get off at the main Oia bus station and get back in along with all the others that were returning to Fira from Oia. So, we got off at the bus station at Oia and had to "jump the line" there in order to board back into the bus. There were a couple of peeved-looking people but we explained that we already had our tickets and that we weren't, in fact, cutting in front of them. It was a 15-20 min ride back to the Fira bus station. From there, we walked back to our hotel room and relaxed for a couple of hours. We decided to try out the jacuzzi for a while but we found that the constant breeze made us feel uncomfortably cold, especially because the sun had now crossed over to the other side.
In the evening, we decided to visit the village/town of Pyrgos which is situated on top of a hill. We walked back to the Fira bus station and caught a bus heading to Perissa. Pyrgos was a bus stop on the way to Perissa. The Fira bus station is very similar to Majestic or KR Market bus stand (in Bengaluru) on a smaller scale but with more chaos and disorder. In Bengaluru, you can catch the attention of another person or a KSRTC staff member and ask them for the bus route number that takes you to some place but here, most of the people around us were also tourists with little to no knowledge about the bus routes and the KTEL (Santorini bus service company) staff and drivers were not very helpful in terms of telling us where to go to catch our bus going towards Perissa. Finally, somebody told us to look for bus #22 and we finally found it and boarded the bus. The roads in Santorini are almost always winding sharply and going either up or down plus they are not very wide. There are very few stretches of road that are either level and/or straight. This means that the bus drivers are exceptionally skillful at driving on these roads. These are big buses that occupy almost the entire half of a road, so it requires excellent anticipation and estimation skills to be able to navigate around bends and corners.
It was an uneventful trip to Pyrgos and we were dropped off at a quiet square from which we could see a few restaurants. We noticed one that purportedly had a good vegan menu, so we decided to have dinner there. We sat ourselves down and placed our order. While we waited for our order to arrive, I suddenly realized that I'd made an absolutely terrible blunder. But, first a bit of a back story.
Sept 3, 1988 was the day I first expressed my feelings to Sahana. So, most years, we "celebrate" the day in some small way. This year, since I knew that we would be in Santorini and that Oia is famous for its sunset views, I had picked out a restaurant (Oia Gefsis) with a vegan menu and made reservations in their rooftop section around the time of sunset.
So, back to the present. Whether it's due to an aging brain/memory or just plain forgetfulness, I had completely miscalculated the date that day. I was under the impression that it was Sept 2 and that the reservation was for the following day. It's only when we had placed our order in the restaurant in Pyrgos that I realized the big blunder I'd made. The time was around 6:40pm and our reservation in Oia Gefsis was for 6:30pm. Normally, they would hold the reservation for an extra 30 min but that was not sufficient because, even if we caught a taxi and drove to Oia, it would take longer than that. There was no way to undo the mistake so we had to live with the fact that I'd completely messed up. Sahana didn't seem to mind (she never does, does she?!) but I wanted to make amends in some way, so I reserved a table at the same restaurant for the next day (Sept 4) around the same time. I couldn't get a table on the rooftop but I thought that we could just go upstairs and sneak a peek around the time of sunset.
We finished our dinner in Pyrgos and still had some time to spare before the next bus arrived to take us back to Fira, so we decided to walk around the charming, winding, narrow lanes of Pyrgos. There is a castle on top of a hill and also a church near the top. We tried using Google Maps to make our way to the castle but it got confused among the narrow streets, so we gave up looking for it after some time. Instead, we did manage to reach the church and realized that it has a great vantage point for the sunset that was coming up soon. There were a few other people there with the same intention, so we settled ourselves down to watch the sun as it went down over the Aegean Sea. We took the obligatory selfies and other pics and then headed down to the bus stop. By then, the frequency of buses had reduced to once per hour, so we had to wait for about 40 min for the next bus back to Fira. We just sat on a bench and waited as it grew darker. But, the streets were always busy and there were always tourists walking back and forth, so we never felt unsafe or worried. In fact, as an aside, we got the impression that there is almost zero crime in Santorini.
The ride on the bus back to Fira made us realize even more how skillful the bus drivers were as they drove in near pitch darkness (there are no street lights on most of the roads in Santorini) through the winding roads. We sat in the front row of seats so we got a great view of how tight the turns were and how the driver made turns look easy when, in fact, they were exceptionally difficult, considering the size of the vehicle and the narrowness of the road.
We arrived in Fira and walked back to our hotel room for the night.
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