Day 118 – 122: Stranded on an Island
Santorini: 72 km
Still in Athens, I booked the ferry from Crete to Santorini quite haphazardly and to be honest a little arbitrarily. I just wanted to see another of the Greek islands, just one didn’t seem enough now I was here. Secretly, I wanted to see the white villages with the blue rooftops too. I’ve booked a hotel for three nights and figure I’ll explore Santorini with the bike but without the bags. The boat arrives in the late evening and I’m immediately treated to an insanely steep eight hairpin climb. Completely drenched in sweat I arrive at the hostel that has reserved a five-person room for me. I might be a softy, but I enjoy the comfort of a bed and a roof after the nights camping on Crete.
I mentioned tourist season was coming to an end already in stories about Croatia. That was in October, it’s December now and Santorini is deserted. A couple of tourists and myself are walking around seemingly lost in time and space on a rock in the middle of the Mediterranean. About 80 percent of everything is closed; shops, hotels, restaurants, café’s. You name it and it’s closed. Their water drained, the pools that decorate every porch and veranda of every luxury hotel are only blue because of the paint. I don’t mind the island’s emptiness; it feels like the handful of people and me have the Santorini for ourselves. I can only imagine the stampede of people here in the summer months. It feels almost more sincere this way. The only group that is here in numbers are construction workers. Hotels, apartment complexes and restaurants are being developed and extended everywhere.
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Even in the quiet Santorini is spectacular. I ride up every mountain on the island and I’m treated to incredible sunsets, rugged nature and white and blue churches on the tops. Being a volcanic island, the beaches are completely black. There’s no sand here, just black pebbles that sound like glass when walking over them.
After three days I’m completely packed again, checked out and ready to claim my territory on the ferry. The check-out time and the ferry departure don’t line up so I spend my time at a coffee bar writing this blog. Once I descent the mountain I’ve climbed in the dark toward the dock just a couple of days earlier, it’s eerily quiet. No cars pass me getting ready to board, no taxis waiting for the forthcoming arrivals. Halfway down I check my phone to see if this is actually the right harbour. It's the only one around. Confused I continue downward. Once at sea level I ask a fisherman what’s going on. “Stike!”, he explains shortly but effectively. “For how long?”, I ask him. “Don’t know!”, he shouts over the wind. I’m stranded on an island. There are worse places to be stranded at! I dread the climb back up, but it’s not as hard as I remember. I check with the ferry operator’s office, who tell me to come back after 20h, then they might know more. I rest in uncertainty and I don’t care at all. This is all part of the adventure, and if need to stay a couple of days extra I’m mostly lucky than anything else. After eight however I get a ticket for the next day, the strike has lasted for roughly the time I was here. I can stay another night in the hotel, repeat my same exact moves the next day, and this time actually set sail back to Athens.
