Santorini meaning ‘whales vagina’. Home to the largest volcanic eruption in the history of the world in 1500BC, forty times greater than that of Krakatoa according to local guide mumma zoe.

We arrived here on the 23rd to Parissa Beach where we stayed in the crappiest hostel in the middle of nowhere reminding us of a wild wild west setting with burnt out and rusted cars with baron land and a massive cliff face in the back drop. This place made whoop whoop seem as though it was within walking distance. We walked to Parissa beach and had a swim at the black sand and pebble beach before jumping on the Internet to find another place to stay on the island. We found a hostel in Oia up the north part of the island.

The hostel we are in at Oia is much nice and the town of Oia itself is quite spectacular. The views over the water are breathtaking and it is the vantage point of the most beautiful sunset that hundreds and hundreds of people flock to watch the sun set over the horizon leaving the sky in pinks and yellows.

During discussion of the sunset, I mentioned to Eddie that the sun isn’t actually setting because it’s the earth rotating, not the sun. He came up with an interesting point when he replied “well then why do they call it a sun set and not an earth set?” Well played.

We went for a walk down to the each which we were told that it would be about ten to fifteen minutes to walk to the beach. An hour and a half later we were still walking down. It was at this point that we realised he meant ten to fifteen Greek minutes which is an entirely different period of time. We went for a swim and found a rock in the water we climbed and jumped off. The water was incredible and blue and very inviting. Some girls swam over to the rock and I was talking to them and one of them asked where I worked as they were also from the northern beaches. I told them and they yelled at their friend to come and swim over. It was Kate who I worked with at RMYC, the guy who owns the brasseries niece. Couldn’t believe how bizarre that was considering there weren’t many people at the beach we were on.

Never thought I’d be caught dead on one of those first fleet lookalike tour boats (unless of course I was kidnapped by pirates and killed), but yesterday we went on one to tour the islands that the great eruption of 1500BC took place. I was expecting to see lava inside the active volcano however all I saw was a bit of smoke and could smell sulphur. I blame my high expectations on clip art on Microsoft Word and Kidpix which provide pictures of volcanos with lava at the top of them.

We were then taken to some hot springs that were cold and had a swim. Didn’t bother us that they were cold because it was so hot. In the springs we put mud on ourselves and I lathered it on myself because I think it’s supposed to be good for your skin or something. Was a bit of a mistake wearing boardies which have white and blue stripes as its almost impossible to get the brown out of them. I have two pairs of shorts and now one of the pairs looks like I’ve had a poo related accident in them.

We went to a part of the island called Thirassia which was apparently once connected to the mainland before that volcano. We had lunch on the water there before heading back to Oia.

We’ve been researching our next moves which look like they are going to be towards Italy. We have booked ferry tickets for 1130pm tonight to take us to Athens arriving at 8am. It’ll be our first overnight transport and so that means its a double whammy as we don’t have to pay for accommodation for that night. The next few days are going to be massive and exhausting trying to get across to the west coast of Greece and then to Italy to then shoot over to the west coast of Italy to the apparently phenomenal amalfi coast