Santorini, part 2

Our 4-wheelers

On the last full day of our Santorini trip we decided to rent 4-wheelers. It was a great choice! We took them all over the island, starting with the red beach. The red beach is another volcanic beach, and the sand is - surprising, I know - red. The rocks surrounding the beach are quite impressive! Bryce and I went swimming, and I guess the tide changed right as we were in the water, because we started drifting further out than we thought. It was pretty scary for a moment, because I feel like I'm a strong swimmer, but even swimming as hard as I could, it took forever to get back to the shore. Other than that little incident, though, the water and sand and scenery couldn't be beat!

We took our 4-wheelers to the lighthouse next, where the winds started picking up terriffically. Kiersten and I stayed behind while Bryce walked so far out onto a ledge that I almost had a heart-attack. But he made it back alive, which was good. We followed our lighthouse trip by a nice, tasty gyro, then headed into Fira. In Fira the winds reaaally started to blow, picking up dust, sand, plastic bags and pieces of cardboard. Our skin stung from being pelted with fine little pieces of dust! And the visibility was so bad at one point that Bryce tried to put his swim goggles on, hoping to see better. But they ended up falling off his face instead.

The dust storm almost deterred us, but we ended up driving all the way up to Oia, at the top of the island, just to say that we saw everything. Driving back was stunning with the sun setting behind us. I drove most of the day (we only rented two 4-wheelers between the 3 of us) and that unfortunately means I couldn't take any pictures. You'll have to trust me that it was stunning.

Our final morning we got up and ate a delicious breakfast of baked-goods and greek yogurt with honey, then wandered for a little before hopping the 9 hour ferry back to Athens.

Red beach

Kiersten on Red Beach

Kiersten and me, relaxing on Red Beach

Helping Bryce put on his helmet

My travel companions!

Kiersten sat on some nettles, which was pretty funny at the time. The picture looks kind of like she's just exploring the side of the cliff, though.

4-wheeling

Kiersten driving our 4-wheeler

The ledge that I was convinced Bryce was going to fall off of. That's Bryce, way out there.

Nice parking job, eh? The 4-wheelers couldn't go in reverse, so to get them out of this position we had to physically carry them around.
Our shadows: I'm driving, Bryce is playing photographer

Oia the second time around. Still just as gorgeous as the first time!

Breakfast

Our favorite 24-hour bakery

"Key Rinks"

My feet in the window of the ferry.

The water below us

Ropes on the ferry