Images: The Sides of the Cauldron; The Cliff Face We Came Down; JL on the Goat Path; SL on the Path; SL With the Church Below her Left ShoulderSantorini is a volcanic caldera.
Imagine a mass of very thick, very hot porridge bubbling away in a huge cauldron on your stove, with bits of steam punching through boils on the top. Then imagine that the whole thing blows up in the middle, layering hot porridge everywhere around the sides. Then, your sprinkler system goes off and fills everything with water, instantly cooling it all down to a hardened mass, filled with water in the middle. Santorini. Caldera – cauldron.
Approximately 3600 years ago – not exactly sure of the month – this all took place, but not in your kitchen or mine. It occurred in the Aegean Sea and was one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in earth's history, called the Minoan Eruption because it was said to wipe out the Minoan civilization, one of the most advanced of its time. It is also one of the reasons that Santorini is said to actually be the lost island of Atlantis.
Our hotel is in the village of Akrotiri, where excavations in 1967 have discovered a level of civilization that has astonished the world, including hot and cold plumbing systems using geothermic heating from the volcano.
Today, we hiked down the side of the porridge pot, the caldera.
There are no warning signs, no barriers. We descended a goat path that ran from Akrotiri to the sea, a distance of over 1000 vertical feet. To be honest, there were times when we wondered when we would consider ourselves too old for this kind of challenge, and there were times when we wondered what we would do if I got hurt. SL might love me, but I am not sure if she could carry me. (She swears she has been carrying me for 38 years.)
The pictures tell the story of the incredible beauty of the scenery, but the sharpness of the descent gets lost unless you are actually there slipping on loose volcanic rice krispies, 18 inches away from a drop of 1000 feet.
As we neared the end of the descent, a tiny white church appeared out of the rock, beautiful against the frozen black magma.
When we finally reached the beach, we discovered that what our map casually referred to “rocks that you go over along the beach”, were actually hills of huge piles of rubble that we had to climb up and back down. At the end of the hike along the beach, we reached another path. Remember the 1000 foot descent? It's 1000 feet back up, too.
We were exhausted, happy and feeling quite proud of ourselves as we sat later that evening and surveyed the daunting but beautiful landscape that we had successfully challenged.
Imagine a mass of very thick, very hot porridge bubbling away in a huge cauldron on your stove, with bits of steam punching through boils on the top. Then imagine that the whole thing blows up in the middle, layering hot porridge everywhere around the sides. Then, your sprinkler system goes off and fills everything with water, instantly cooling it all down to a hardened mass, filled with water in the middle. Santorini. Caldera – cauldron.
Approximately 3600 years ago – not exactly sure of the month – this all took place, but not in your kitchen or mine. It occurred in the Aegean Sea and was one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in earth's history, called the Minoan Eruption because it was said to wipe out the Minoan civilization, one of the most advanced of its time. It is also one of the reasons that Santorini is said to actually be the lost island of Atlantis.
Our hotel is in the village of Akrotiri, where excavations in 1967 have discovered a level of civilization that has astonished the world, including hot and cold plumbing systems using geothermic heating from the volcano.
Today, we hiked down the side of the porridge pot, the caldera.
There are no warning signs, no barriers. We descended a goat path that ran from Akrotiri to the sea, a distance of over 1000 vertical feet. To be honest, there were times when we wondered when we would consider ourselves too old for this kind of challenge, and there were times when we wondered what we would do if I got hurt. SL might love me, but I am not sure if she could carry me. (She swears she has been carrying me for 38 years.)
The pictures tell the story of the incredible beauty of the scenery, but the sharpness of the descent gets lost unless you are actually there slipping on loose volcanic rice krispies, 18 inches away from a drop of 1000 feet.
As we neared the end of the descent, a tiny white church appeared out of the rock, beautiful against the frozen black magma.
When we finally reached the beach, we discovered that what our map casually referred to “rocks that you go over along the beach”, were actually hills of huge piles of rubble that we had to climb up and back down. At the end of the hike along the beach, we reached another path. Remember the 1000 foot descent? It's 1000 feet back up, too.
We were exhausted, happy and feeling quite proud of ourselves as we sat later that evening and surveyed the daunting but beautiful landscape that we had successfully challenged.
No comments:
Post a Comment