So I took Joani on another adventure today. I'm glad she's my wife because I'm not sure there are really that many woman in the world who would put up with me.
I picked up our rental car today and the first thing I noticed is that there was no onboard navigation system. No problem we had thought ahead and packed our trusty Garmin that has already helped us through France, Spain, Portugal and Amsterdam so I only had to get from the airport back to our house where Joani and I were staying. Have I mentioned yet that there are no addresses in the rural areas of Santorini? I turned what should have been a 15 minute drive into a one hour fiasco before I found the upper highway looking down on the church that I already sent you an email photo of. There I parked the car and walked on one of those paths I showed you, to our house where Joani was sitting wondering what had happened to me. We packed our bags, walked back up to the rental and plugged in the Garmin ready for a day of exploring.
Hello Garmin do you recognize Pyrgos? ( the town we're staying in) NO. Do you recognize Fira? ( The capital city) NO. Do you recognize Santorini? (The island we're on) No. Nothing, Nada, Zilch.
We have a car for twelve hours ( well actually eleven, since I've already been lost once) and we're going old school. No Onboard navigation, no TomTom, no Garmin. Just old fashioned paper maps. No problem I've got this?!?!?!
Now one of the harder things for me to say is that Joani is not perfect. Almost perfect, yes, but she does have a few faults. One of them, is the fact that she can't read or look at a map while driving. She gets carsick. This means memorizing as much of a map as I can and then stopping to recheck if I'm not certain. Even that didn't really help because most of the roads in Santorini have no signs , the maps are not to scale, the mapmakers haven't updated the fact that some roads have been diverted due to construction and even though the construction workers do put up signs, they are in Greek!!! Oh and in case any of you reading this, haven't driven in Europe, I have to tell you, what is a two lane highway to them is a back alley to us in North America.
We did mange to get to two different beaches, a fisherman's port for lunch, an excavation site with ruins dating all the way back to 5000 BC. Yep, that's right, 7000 years ago Santorini had a port town and started what became a very advanced civilization.
Later in the day we drove to the far end of the island to see the famed sunset at Oia, but when we saw how many people were coming into to town, it seemed like a crazy rock concert so we left before the sun was fully set and made our way slowly back to the airport to return the car before we got charged for another day.
End of adventure, right. Not so fast Kemosabe.
We jumped in a taxi at the airport and told the driver the name of the church in front of our house because as I've said, where we stayed there was no address. Simple, right? Wrong. Seems there's a whole bunch of churches with the same name in Santorini. I paid him the money, got out of the car and immediately noticed that we weren't where we wanted to be. The taxi cab driver said, " you said Panagia church and there it is, I've got another fare" and left.
Here's what's funny about this. When I was lost early in the day before I had picked up Joani, I had seen this other Church and thought I could find our way back to where we should be. Boy how wrong I was. Pretty soon we were wandering in dark backstreets, looking up cliffs on one side and over cliffs on the other, with no idea where we were. After about 1/2 hour I knew Joani was getting pretty tired and I was getting discouraged, so with my tail between my legs I flagged down the next car I saw. If you could believe my luck it turned out to be an off duty policeman. A very friendly young man who walked us back to a recognizable part of town, called our guide Aristotle who came on his scooter and ferried us, one by one back to our house. Both the policeman and Aristotle laughed when I told them how embarrassed I was. The young man said he has seen it lot's of times before and all Aristotle said when I thanked him was," that's what friends are for."
What an adventure for our last full day in Santorini. Some photos for you.
The first one is the excavation site.
The next two are the before and after photos of our seafood lunch that was looking at us
as we dismembered it. (Nothing but bones baby!)
Then, two random shots of Oia,
and the last is almost a photo of the famous sunset.
Garry
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