The Barker Five: Day 6--Santorini

I know I am ridiculous at this whole blog thing! I WILL eventually get our whole trip documented and possibly even update other events from the summer, but for now, I am making no promises. I'm back to being a working mom and am still trying to juggle everything :)

Today began early because we were porting at our first stop of the day in order to make it to our second port by 6 that evening. The ship was unable to port right along the island so we took boats from the ship to the port. While getting ready that morning my dress was having a hard time with its zipper and so while we were on the little boat that was taking us to the port, Caleb was trying to fix my zipper. The zipper started below my thigh on my side and went up to my armpit. While Caleb was trying to get my zipper to zip he had to yank on it to get it to go down and it completely ruined my zipper. We couldn’t get my dress to zip and I was fully exposed! Caleb and I sat for the entire boat ride trying to figure out what we could do with my dress because we obviously had no way of going back and getting a change of clothes. We luckily had some towels in our bag and Caleb made one of them into a sash that wrapped around my waist and luckily kept my dress closed enough to not reveal everything!

Once we arrived at the island we were at the very bottom of the island. Santorini was built all along the top of the hill and was the most beautiful sight. As soon as you got off there were all these donkeys and little men waiting for you. For 5 euro you could ride this donkeys up this gigantic hill to top and get to Santorini or you could walk. Once you see the pictures, you will see that it was a no brainer to take the donkeys. These men helped you on the donkeys and then just let them go on their own up the road. They would all follow each other and try to keep up with each other. My donkey kept racing to get ahead and Caleb’s would just randomly stop and he couldn’t get it to move. About half-way up our donkeys all just started running up the hill and we couldn’t figure out why. Then we looked behind us and this man was coming up behind us yelling something at them and then clicking at them. It was an adventurous ride to say the least!

As soon as we got to the top we were on a race to get started because we only had a few hours. We had known ahead of time that we wanted to rent a 4-wheeler or scooter so we could go to the other side of the island to a village called Oia. One of the travel guys had told us exactly where to go once we left the donkey trail, but for some reason the way he told us did not get us exactly to the place. So….we were both a little frustrated and irritated because we knew our time was ticking away. We found a travel agency in town and were trying to ask the gal where we could find a place to rent a scooter. She was busy with someone else and not too anxious to help us, so Caleb told me to stay there while he went looking around. I waited and waited and she finally (after at least 10 min) was ready to help me. She told me it was just a block or so down the road. In the meantime, Caleb had found a scooter rental and was trying to rent a scooter for us. The man asked for his driver’s license right away and questioned Caleb about why it didn’t say anything about a motorcycle license. Caleb was anxious to get this scooter rented so he told the guy we didn’t need those where he was from! Needless to say, Caleb has never drove a scooter in his life and the guy ( and me) would have to be crazy to trust him to drive one. Caleb finally gets the scooter finalized and is on his way to come get me a little ways down the road. He tries to act suave as he leaves so that the guy won’t question his decision to rent the scooter to him. He takes off with a few jerks and stumbles, but then steadies out and comes and picks me up. We are finally on our way to Oia.

It was about a ½ hour scooter ride to the village. Caleb was a little hesitant with the scooter at first, but he caught on quickly and we had some wonderful views along our way. When we drove into Oia it was beautiful. When we pulled into the town, we weren’t sure where exactly to go so we were kind of stumbling along roads trying to find the best place to go. We went down one road and it had this pothole in the center of it. Caleb tried to get us around the pothole and instead drove us right into the back of a van! It was so embarrassing! This man asked us if we were o.k. and luckily he did start yelling at us about having just ran into a van. Luckily, no harm was done to the scooter, only a little red paint was rubbed onto the back of the van. When we hit the van, I fell forward and my leg touched a hot part of the scooter and so I received a nice burn on my calve. The area was full of white buildings with blue tops and it was right along the coast. I found myself taking pictures everywhere. It seemed like every time you turned around there was something neat to take a picture of. We weren’t able to stay long due to the time constraints, so we kind of rushed through Oia and just tried to take as many pictures as we could. After getting all our pictures we started heading back to Santorini. Again, it was a beautiful drive and we enjoyed the wind blowing through our hair and the scenery.

Once back to Santorini we returned the scooter and then looked through some of the shops for souvenirs. We were able to purchase a few things and then it was time to head back to the boat. In order to get back to the port we had to trek down the huge donkey hill we came up. You could take a donkey back down, but we chose to walk it. The rocks were so smooth from all the traffic that was on them that you would just slip all the time. It was very steep and you had donkeys coming down behind you as well. It was a relief to get back to the bottom.

After getting onto the boat, we laid out and sunbathed on the ship. It was a really hot day and it was nice to enjoy the cool water. That evening the ship was going to be porting at Mykonos for the evening and so we began getting ready for that.