Wow.

Some places are nice, some places are pretty, some places you wouldn't go back to, and then some places are just wow.

Wow.

Santorini is a caldera rising up from the bluest water I've ever seen anywhere. Possibly the Cote d'Azur in France is bluer. Possibly. It's hard to believe. But even the Cote d'Azur wouldn't have the volcanic cliffs rising straight out of the water.

I arrived in Santorini late at night, and while on the boat I looked at the map, and the distance from the harbor (no places to stay) to the main city of Thira (good youth hostel) looked no more than 5 km. No problem, I thought, I've run 5K before. Not with a 50lb pack, of course, but how bad could it be? And when we pulled into the harbor, and I first saw the cliffs, I was stunned by their beauty and tricked by the illusion of distance at night. It sure looked like a 20-25 minute walk up to the top.

Well, I think based on how long it took the bus to get down the road when I finally left Santorini, it was probably about a 4K walk up a steep, winding road to the top of the caldera. Then it was a hilly walk of at least 5K after that to Thira. Of course, I had no water, it was hot, and about 2/3 of the way up I slumped against the little wall that prevents you from falling over the cliff and debated sleeping right there on the side of the road. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of how much hotter it would be when the sun came up.

It took probably close to 4 hours to make it to Thira. I thought I might die before then. When I got to the hostel I was the only person in my room full of bunks and so I shouted at the tops of my lungs "Yes! I made it!" Then I noticed the room partitions didn't go all the way to the ceiling, and I heard a lot of people in adjacent rooms stirring. Oops.

If I ever become filthy rich I will pay to have a sign posted at the harbor which says:

"If you're a stupid American even thinking for a second you're going to walk up this road, forget it and just pony up now for a taxi before they all drive home and you're stuck." I think that will help.

I spent all of my time on Santorini either hiking or swimming. The thing is you have to do one to do the other. All the towns on Santorini are on the top of the caldera, and the water of course is on the bottom. So you have to walk down somewhere between 300-600 "stairs" to get to the water. I put stairs in quotes because after all Greece is a foreign country and American ideas about things don't always apply. I always thought of stairs as being somewhat regular, at least vaguely flat, and not completely covered in donkey doo-doo.

Yes, you can hire a taxi (taxi = donkey) to take you up or down the steps. After watching them cart off some German woman who fell from one and apparently broke either her ankle or leg, I decided I'd just take the exercise, thank you very much.

So, you do the 300-600 steps in blistering sun and heat. That's OK, because the water is absolutely glorious. The problem is you have to walk back up at the end, and when you get to the top you need another swim.

(Other good news: constant hiking, swimming, and sweating half my body weight every day has reduced my lovehandles to 1996 levels. It's very exciting.) Anyway....

One day I walked down the wrong set of stairs to the water, and ended up at a beach with no shade or cliff diving. In the distance I saw the beach I wanted, with both these things. I really didn't feel like walking back up the 300 steps and then hiking over someplace to walk down a different 300, so I conceived a brilliant solution: I would simply hike along the bottom of the sheer caldera cliff to save time and effort. I paused a moment to revel in my brilliance.

An hour and a half later, when I was only around 2/3 of the way there, I found myself standing at a curved rock outcropping I couldn't see around, on a ledge barely wider than my right foot (which is wearing one of those canvas ninja shoes, not exactly suited for climbing), while my left foot, and left arm (holding my bag with camera, water bottle, Lonely Planet Guide to Greece, and Greek cookies) are dangling over empty space, approximately 40 feet over a pile of sharp looking volcanic boulders. My only grip on this rock outcropping was with my right hand, which is clutching a tiny little flat piece that sticks a couple inches out.

It was at this moment that I paused to reconsider previous thoughts about personal brilliance and, more broadly, general personal decision-making capability.

Then, since I had gotten myself in a position where it looked riskier going backwards than forwards, I swung my body around the ledge as hard as I could, and started grabbing for anything to hold onto. Thankfully, I found something, and I found myself pasted to the rock not unlike Tom Cruise in MI:2, only facing into the rock instead of away. Then I inched my way forward to a safer bit of rock. It took me roughly 2.5 hours to get to the other beach, but the shade and the cliff diving were worth it.

The moral of the story: I'm just like Tom Cruise, only a little bit taller. And not an actor. Or rich. Or a teenybopper sex idol. Or married to Nicole Kidman.

Later on I was sunning myself on a rock just above the water line, which is safe inside the caldera because the is almost no wave action; the outer walls of the caldera almost eliminate wave action. It was so beautiful, and comfortable, and warm... it was a little piece of paradise.

Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard a change in the water sounds, and just for the heck of it I sat up to look out at the water, just in time to get drenched by the first of several big waves. Thank god I had hung my bag with camera, et al up high on a boulder. My towel, clothes, shoes, and water bottle were all swept into the sea, and I had to retrieve them. Then suddenly the water calmed down again.

Later I asked at the hostel desk, and it turns out the Santorini, like the LA basin, is extremely active geologically still, and like LA, is hit with many many small earthquakes every day, which are more or less imperceptible but often produce bursts of waves. As always, I learned this crucial bit of information after the fact.