CHAPTER 33
I love Colorado, but I think I came from the sea. Whenever we travel anywhere that is on the ocean, I am always hit with an overwhelming sense of belonging. To satiate this feeling, it stands that we usually try to take a boat ride of some sort, be it catching a ferry, or renting a motor boat, or maybe even just a kayak, but regardless, we get out there, on the water, however we can. Inevitably though, as soon as we embark upon the placid seas, I feel an opposite but equal emotion of “gosh, certainly we could have done this far easier and far cheaper if we had our own boat, anchored here upon these same placid seas?”
Coincidentally, we actually do have our own boat now, and we do plan on sailing through Greece and all of the islands that the Aegean has to offer, at some point in the not-so-distant future. But at the time of this trip, we didn’t, and to make up for this nautical shortcoming in our lives, we decided to shell out for an all-day catamaran tour of the island. We started from the same small cove that we had watched the sunset from the night before, and made our first stop at Nea Kameni, the uninhabited island in the middle of the caldera.
It turns out that Santorini as a volcano is still active, and the water coming from one particular cove in this central island is hot, and opaque brown in color from all the minerals it gathers as it bubbles its way up to the surface from the magma chamber far below. Considering we were quite literally swimming in and active, but dormant, volcano, one that could erupt at any moment as far as we knew, no one seemed to be too concerned with the situation. I guess the popular thought is that we would probably be able to see some early warning signs of an imminent eruption, which would give us all ample time to evacuate. But try telling that to all those poor suckers from Atlantis (which is speculated to sit at the bottom of this caldera due to a massive eruption in the 16th century BCE). Despite the looming armageddon below us, the swimming was fun, at least until four more tour boats arrived, disgorging their masses into the ocean hot springs, completely ruining the mood. Our boat took that as the clue to leave, and we continued on south across the caldera, around an impressive cliff of volcanic rock, to the Red Beach, where we jumped in the water again, to do some snorkeling, followed up by a tasty onboard lunch.
Prev ChapterNext Chapter
