It was about 12:30am when I first woke up, to find that Sunil and Nathalia had disappeared. A note was on the table explaining that my bag had been hidden under my chair. Curious, I picked up my bag and went to look for them.I found them on deck, right at the back of the boat, asleep in their own little windstorm. No-one was sleeping nearby, probably because they had at least half a brain and didn’t want to wake up with frostbite. This must have been Sunil’s idea, I thought, and with that I went back to the Saloon. I moved to the other side of the room, where a sizable area of sofa had been vacated, but a plastic bag clearly marked territory. I decided that the person didn’t need quite that much room, so I used the last few inches of the sofa as a pillow, which at least meant I didn’t have to sleep with my neck bent.

We docked at about 4:30am, which was later than I thought was scheduled, but I wasn’t complaining. It was still dark as we disembarked. An offer of €8 per night was accepted, in a place in Perissa, which was quite well located for the south coast of the island, but on an inconvenient side of the hill for the towns to the north. The owner let us into the room straight away. I reflected that a 4:30am check in was certainly very accommodating, but later discovered that a couple who were in the same minibus as us from the port were not allowed into their room until noon.

Sleeping now was quite pointless, we realised, and took advantage of the early hour to go down to the beach and watch the sunrise. My camera’s battery had run out, which was annoying, but Chris took some good pictures. It got gradually brighter for a long time and for a while we wondered if the sun had risen behind the clouds. But eventually a warm golden glow began to surface on top of the low clouds that brushed the horizon. The sunrise was spectacular. The clouds funnelled the light into rays that streaked down into the sea.

We had breakfast at the first restaurant to open, on the main street. Perissa’s central point was a church with a roundabout (turning circle), from which the main road and the road to the beach radiated at right angles. Lining one side of the main road was a parade of restaurants and a travel agent, and on the other a scooter hire outfit. There were more restaurants down by the beach, but this was basically it. Perissa is one of the smaller villages on the island, and quite sleepy.

Chris didn’t have his driving licence with him, and this meant that he couldn’t hire a scooter, but I had mine and paid a very reasonable €7 to get a bike for the day. They only provide enough fuel to get to the nearest petrol station though, so filling up was the first priority. The sun was initially fierce, and I’d left without any sunscreen on. I began to worry that I might arrive at the petrol station burned to a cinder. I found a working pump and filled up about 5km out of town, then promptly turned around and headed back to Perissa. The journey back seemed a lot shorter, and the sun was beginning to drift in and out of cloud.

We now had an interesting problem. Four people, one scooter. Sunil and Nathalia opted for the local bus service, which seemed to operate on a once-every-odd-Thursday timetable, while Chris and I hopped on the scooter. We were all headed for Kamari, where there was a shop run by Charlotte Jordan, my tour guide from Thailand. Steering became a bit dodgy with two on the bike, but we made decent progress until we got lost. The problem is that while Kamari and Perissa are actually only about a kilometre apart, they are on opposite sides of a steep hill, and there aren’t any roads going over it. So getting from Perissa to Kamari actually involves going via the west coast of the island, right round the hill.

We managed to get lost by missing a left turn and ended up in Pyrgos. Easy mistake to make – on the rather stylised map I’d been given by the hire company, the road the Kamari went through Pyrgos. It was starting to rain anyway, so we stopped for a drink.

We finally found Kamari, and it was much bigger than Perissa, or any of the places we’d been through on the way. Restaurants and cafes seemed to be everywhere, and the sun was back out, making the place look very lively and cheerful. Charlotte’s shop was known to the tourist information place, so we parked up and followed the directions, which took us along the beachfront.

We found the shop, Kali Bazaar – and much as I’d love to plug the exceptional quality of merchandise, Charlotte was selling up and moving on in three weeks time, so no more Kali Bazaar. We sat and chatted with her and the ‘regulars’ for a while (the shop had a sofa outside), and soon enough Sunil and Nathalia turned up. Chris and I left them on the Kamari beachfront, and scooted back round the hill to Perissa, just in time for the heavens to open. It had been an unpredictable day – periods of the sort of bright sunshine we’d expected, but punctuated with short, light showers. But by five Nature had got itself sorted and decided that a really heavy rainstorm was in order.

Chris and I were sitting at a café under an awning watching the rain and wondering how Sunil and Nathalia were doing, when we got an SMS from Sunil explaining that they’d decide to walk. Over the hill. To say that “they’d” decided was almost certainly inaccurate, because this idea had Sunil written all over it. Shaking our heads we ordered another round and wondered how long we should wait before calling mountain rescue.

“How long do you think we should wait before calling mountain rescue?”, I wondered aloud.
“They’ll be fine, and I don’t think Santorini has mountain rescue”
“You know they’re wearing flip-flops, don’t you?”
“They’ll be fine”

Chris obviously didn’t share my concerns. In fact, they were indeed fine, and another SMS had us meet them at the hostel. We ate dinner at a local pizzeria, where Chris paid for the entire meal. He does this occasionally, when he gets these urges to be extravagant. I’m always happy to indulge this kind of behaviour.