After steaming across choppy seas it began to grow in the distance…. Santorini. Soon we were anchored beneath a series of switchback roads that seemed to be chiselled in the cliff, and amazingly busses were going to carry us all the way to the top. From the boat, the houses at the top stood out like shining beacons in pristine white some with domed bright blue roofs or shutters. Part of keeping the heat out I supposed.

The busses laboured up the switchbacks and deposited us at an outpost where the locals bid for our custom in the accommodation stakes… the first night was a smallish room with adequate facilities, but it was just too far from the action at least a twenty minute walk – we checked out and donned back packs next morning, they weighed us down as if we were carrying sacks of wet washing in the stinging sun on that twenty minute trip, but we found somewhere to stay near to the edge of the action.

With deposits paid and keys collected and bags dumped we embroiled ourselves in the bustle of Santorini, from the edge of the cliffs we looked out to the dark shell of Fira – a volcanic hulk which led the eye to the horizon which was an enormity of grey restless sea merging into the deep blue sky in the distance. The town smelled of motor bike exhausts and uncollected rubbish and we attended a few internet cafes trying to plan ahead a bit for the next island. I don’t know why this was where I had wanted to come, but after the first week of traveling I came to the conclusion that despite its inefficiencies Greek Island time was a good way to run a life. None of our hurried pressured ant like day to day existence, all things done in their own time here on the islands, Siesta mandatory, eating at Ten P.M. normal……..ah the Mediterranean lifestyle……