Santorini's Traditional Back Side

To most travelers, the word Santorini immediately conjures up the image of its world famous sea-filled volcano crater, and the whitewashed villages built into the near-vertical cliffs of its caldera. It's easy to understand why most tourist activities concentrate on the caldera side of the island -- after all it is the caldera view that sets Santorini apart from the world's other top island destinations. It's a shame that most visitors end up missing the other side of Santorini, the quiet, non-commercialized interior of the island.



Just 20 minutes on the local bus from cosmopolitan Fira, not so far away from the bustling jeweler shops and high end restaurants at the caldera's lip, there's another side of Santorini, the real, pre-tourism Santorini, that day-trippers from cruise ships never see. In fact we hardly ran into any other tourists when we visited these villages, which shows just how underrated they still remain.



We only learned of the existence of these villages from chatting with the daughter of the owner of our hotel in Fira. "If you want to see the quiet side of the island," she said, "go to Eborio." So we set aside one afternoon and planned out our bus routes, first taking the bus from Fira to Eborio, then a return bus from Eborio and stepping off at Pyrgos for a panoramic view of the island, before returning to Fira for dinner.



Only upon arriving at the bus stop that I realized "Eborio" was properly spelled Εμπόριο, or Emporio, and used to be the island's commercial hub (an Emporium so to speak) prior to the arrival of mass tourism. The area seemed to have retained its status as a shopping centre to the locals, judging by the supermarkets lining the main road towards Perissa beach. But grocery shopping wasn't what we came for, as we went off the main road and started our hike towards the top of the village.



A couple of turns into the village's maze of alleys and it felt like landing on a completely different island. In a way this felt more like Paros than Santorini -- no stores, no tourists, and not even many villagers as we arrived during nap time in the early afternoon. The only congregation of locals was on a roadside with a few older men playing the Greek variation of backgammon and blasting traditional music on an old cassette player. Apparently time has really stood still, at least since the 1980's.



A few more steps into the village and we became utterly lost in its tangle of narrow alleys and haphazardly interconnected paths. We were only able to surmise our location relative to the village's several landmarks: a walled compound near the entrance, a charming blue domed church with a square and a bell tower, and another blue domed church at the top of the village. Further uphill sat the crumbling ruins of an old Byzantine castle.



Losing ourselves in Eborio's labyrinth was an excellent way to spend a leisurely afternoon. At every corner there were only three ways to go -- further up towards the crest of the hill, horizontally along the myriad of cobblestone alleys, or back down towards the main road. Every house was a whitewashed cube with thick walls and disproportionately small windows with colorful, albeit aged and faded, wooden shutters. There's so much character in this village -- I could easily spend weeks here just chilling out in these courtyards.



The further we climbed towards the top of the village, the more eccentric the architecture seemed to have become. This cheese-like facade was getting weird even for these Greek islands! As every alley seemed deserted in the mid-day heat, we soon spent more and more time standing underneath the many arched passageways to cool ourselves in the draft wind.



The top of the hill offered a commanding view of the surroundings, with the front side facing the entire village and the back side overlooking the pastoral land dotted with white farmhouses, small flocks of goats and a donkey. Aside from the electrical wires and the odd solar panel installation, the village probably hasn't changed much in appearance over the past several hundred years.



The downhill hike back to the bus station was much easier, and concluded with a trip to the local Kafeneon for an iced coffee and a shake. The assembly of backgammon grandpas were still there with their old-school ghetto blaster, as they would be on any given day I expect. It was time for a bus to our next stop of Pyrgos, the village with the highest elevation on the island.



Somewhat smaller in size than Eborio but arguably more majestic in location, Pyrgos is propped up on a hilltop at the centre of the island overlooking both sides of the sea. The Venetians and the Turks saw its defensibility as a stronghold, and ruled Santorini from its castle for centuries. Today the old Venetian castle still stands, though it has since been divided up by the townspeople as private homes, churches and public ground. You can just imagine the resulting labyrinth with white Cycladic houses attached to and sprouting organically out of the castle's brick walls.



This view was what came for -- a panorama of the entire island of Santorini. In the foreground are island's famous vineyards, producing its wind-swept, drought-resistant grapes out of a tough volcanic terroir. Further up were the cliff-side towns of Fira and Imerovigli, and far in the background was the north end of the island and the village of Oia. There is hardly a better place to appreciate the island of Santorini as part of a circular volcanic rim.



For readers planning on visiting Santorini, I hope this convinces you that there is a charming, traditional, and certainly quieter side of the island worth visiting. And if you're planning to visit nearby islands solely for some quiet time, perhaps there's something within Santorini that will satisfy you as well.