Day 7 - Saturday, June 17th, 2023 - Santorini, Greece - Part 1

Day 7 - Saturday, June 17th, 2023 - Santorini, Greece - Part 1

Trek woke up super early so he could get in line at 6am to get our tindering tickets for Santorini.  The cruise ship can’t port directly at the island, so all the passengers have to load onto smaller boats & ride about 30 minutes to the smaller port at the base of the 700 foot Santorini cliff.  He was about 25th in line & we got tindering tickets for #8.  At 7am they’d start calling numbers & you had 5 minutes to get to the 4th deck to show your indexing tickets in order to get on the next “shuttle” boat to the island.  Because we weren’t sure when #8 would be called, we opted for the buffet breakfast rather than the formal dining hall.  We all grabbed some quick food then waited for our number to be called.  We were called at 7:30 so we hurried to floor 4, got in the #8 line & made our way down to deck 1 & the tinder boat.  Each boat held about 25 people.  I’m not a huge fan of small boats, so tindering was not my favorite part of the day.  I was a little seasick by the time we made it ashore 30 minutes later.

When we arrived a HUGE cliff stood in front of us.  Santorini, Greece is a small island (only about 5-6 miles long. . . In a crescent shape, & about 2-3 miles wide). From the top of the cliff, you could see the island in it’s entirety & the ocean touching every part of it.  To get to the actual city at the top of the cliff you had 3 options.  #1: Hike - which involved hiking a massive switchback with over 500 steep steps going back & forth up the cliff side. . . (Takes 1.5+ hours to do.)  #2: Ride the Cable Car - $6 per person per way, pretty much the best option if you’re willing to wait in the 2+ hour line to get on.  (Did I mention there were 5 cruise ships ported there the morning we were there. . . That’s about 7500 people ALL trying to get up that cliff at the same time.) #3: Donkey - $10 per person, & you ride the donkey up the switchbacks along the cliff side & make it up in about 20 minutes.  It was already 85 degrees outside & we were melting so hiking was NOT an option.  We had to be back on the boat by 5:30 so waiting in line for 2 hours wasn’t really sounding great either.  So we decided to have an adventure & ride donkeys up the 700 foot cliff of Santorini, Greece.  We waited in line for about 30 minutes for the donkeys.  And because each donkey had a specific weight limit, we all got split up. 

Trek got sent up first, then the 3 boys, then several other people NOT part of our group, then me, then the girls.  The boys had an absolute blast.  If you ask them what their very favorite part of this vacation was, they will say DONKEYS! (& free ice cream of course). You can see the absolute joy in their faces as they rode up.  Taya had a great donkey too.  She was all smiles the whole way up.  Lorien & I got the mean donkeys which totally makes me laugh now.  At the time we both thought we were going to die.  Lorien’s donkey loved to smash her into any other donkey it would find, especially when the other donkeys were pooping so it would get all over her legs.  Poor thing was covered in donkey poop by the time we reached the top.  My donkey was HUGE (like the size of a regular horse).  He was aggressive & didn’t like people in general.  He loved to push my legs into the side of the rock wall & grind them there until they were completely scratched up.  He also liked to run into & push pedestrians trying to hike the switchbacks.  He would charge into them & push them to the edge of the cliff to the point where I thought I would fall off the cliff as well.  By the time I reached the top, I couldn’t wait to get off.  My legs were scratched & bruised, one of my feet got jammed so hard that it felt sprained, & I was ready to NOT almost fall of the cliff anymore.  Ha ha ha.  It was scary, but I loved that we got to experience such an adventure.  And I’m extra glad that my boys got really good donkeys that made it so much fun for them.