Back to Athens

Santorini Island Tuesday Oct 9th.

This is our final day on Santorini, after which our group will disperse with most heading back to Australia. After 5 weeks together in Turkey and Greece we have shared some unforgettable adventures together and I am sure that it will be an experience that we will all cherish for the rest of our lives.

Yesterday I took a short cruise to the centre of the caldera to visit the volcano. This is a bleak rocky island with multiple craters, some of which are still steaming out rotten egg gas and steam. When you look back from the volcano to Santorini you can still see the unmistakable signs of the massive explosion that rocked this place in 1500 BC. Not only did it obliterate most of the island and created a huge deepwater harbour, but is also created a massive 200 m tsunami that destroyed most life on Crete at the time. Since that massive detonation there have been numerous smaller eruptions, the last one in 1950. In recent months there has been growing activity under the volcano and the magma chamber has greatly enlarged, raising the ground level by about 20cm. There has also been a series of small earthquakes in the region, possibly also heralding that all is not well underground.

On the volcano itself there are several remote monitering stations. These are hopefully there to provide an early warning should a new eruption become imminent, in which case an immediate evacuation of Santorini would take place.

While we were there, we observed yet more large cruise ships repeat the daily routine of disgorging and reabsorbing their boatloads of passengers to the shore. It is hard to believe that in a couple of weeks all this will shut down. We are now nearing the end of the tourist season and, by the end of October, just about everything on the island shuts down. I was talking to the owner of our hotel, and she told me that they close the hotel and return to another house they own in Athens for the next few months. This would still be a fantastic place in the cooler season (it never gets cold here) so I don't understand why people only choose to come in the hot and crowded summer months. Since we were at the end of the season it was quieter and an ideal time to come.

Last night we wandered along the clifftop walkway and watched spellbound at the beautiful lights of Thira scattered all along the steep cliffsides. It was a delightful way to end our Santorini interlude.

We heard on the news that Athens is likely to be in turmoil when we return, due to a visit by the German chancellor Angela Merkel. The streets will be full of riot police and rooftop snipers. We just hope it does not close the airport. I suppose this is just another adventure for the Ghostriders and I will just have to see what happens. Several times in the past I have found myself in war zones and in the middle of riots, but I have found that if you use common sense and stay clear of the trouble areas there is usually little to fear.

After I leave Athens, I will be in Paris for a few days before taking the long journey back to Australia. While in Paris I will be finalising some arrangements for our 2013 France Adventure.Läs mer