Beaches - or not...

White beach

Red beach

Today was somewhat chaotic as the tour we were scheduled to be on was cancelled last night around 9:30 pm.  Our travel agent assistant here in Santorini, Stella, told us that we would still be able to visit the beaches and the archaeological site of Akrotiri, just using local buses instead of being on a tour.  That suited us as we weren't really interested in the whole tour concept, but we wanted to get to these interesting beaches and bring back some sand from each of them.  So we planned to go to the red and the white beaches this morning, both right near Akrotiri, and then the black beach in the afternoon, with our swimming gear.  They were on two separate bus routes, so in my mind we wouldn't need swim stuff till the afternoon.  When we got to Akrotiri, we got off at the wrong spot, and couldn't see the red beach.  Then, we heard a man shouting "Red beach, white beach, black beach!" from the pier.  For 5 Euros, he would take us on his boat to each/any of three beaches.  This sounded fine, but what we didn't realize that there were no piers on any of the beaches, and he just brought the boat up to shore and you were supposed to wade in.  Stewart was wearing long pants and was angry with me for not advising him to wear swim stuff.  Yikes.  So we didn't get off at any of the three beaches, just took a few photos from the boat - which was nice anyway.  We also saw that the beaches were mostly pebbly, with little actual sand.  When we got back to the pier, we walked up the road to the entrance to the archaeological site and saw the road the leads to the red beach, which we could have walked to.  We decided to visit Akrotiri, and then head back to the hotel.

Pottery at Akrotiri

In the afternoon, we took a second bus to Perissa, which is famous for its black beach.  Well, I'm not big on beaches, sand or sun, so it was only for the sake of giving Stewart the opportunity to swim that we went.  The sand was boiling hot and I took a quick wade into the water, then back out so Stewart could go in.  I didn't want to leave our things unattended on the beach.  Stewart went in briefly, also, not really swimming, and then we sat in the sun for a bit to dry off.  Came back to the hotel for a swim in the hotel pool!!!

Swimming pool at the Nissos Thira - cold, refreshing swim

Random strangers and Stewart in the water at Perissa