Travels With Sunscreen

Our flight from Santorini to London was cancelled due to ash caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland. On television screens it looked like a big snowstorm blowing over the UK, instead of hot grey ash spewing incessantly into the sky.

“Poor you, you’re stuck on a Greek island for a few extra days,” my family e-mailed me.

My companion and I had made friends with two fellow travelers, Larry and Laura, a doctor and his daughter from Newark, New Jersey. When we learned we were stranded a few extra days, Larry asked us to dinner on our last night on the island to celebrate a volcanic ash-free flight home. Until then, we had more time to explore.

Santorini in April is hot. Roosters crowed at all hours of the day, and stray dogs roamed the streets eating trash and shadowing passerby. Cruise ships arrived daily and tourists trudged up the caldera, or let a bell-jangling donkey do the trudging for them. Living on the island that week, I disdained the day-trippers and their sudden morning influx and quieting late afternoon departure, their enormous boat sliding away onto its next destination. Tourism was like a boa constrictor wrapped around the Greek island: it wasn’t pretty, and it fed constantly, but it was holding Santorini in place.

It’s easy to feed on Santorini. A Seussian city of white buildings built on white buildings faced with blue doors, it beckoned me to walk everywhere. Narrow staircases led to narrower alleyways and sudden church steeples, small open-air stores where birds flew freely in and out. White windmills contrasted against layercake sunsets as sailboats danced across the water.

Ever a glutton for Mediterranean food, I learned it tastes twice as good when you are staring out at the Mediterranean Sea: deep dishes of moussaka, juicy souvlaki, tzatziki drizzled over gyro meat, crisp tomatoes and wet blocks of feta cheese, crumbly baklava and honey.

We ate dinner with Larry and Laura on the patio of a seaside restaurant on Ammoudi Bay. Huge waves sent sprays of salt onto our grilled fish as we tore bread and dipped it into olive oil. Carafes of red wine were constantly refilled and Larry ordered us small glasses of ouzo, a sweet Greek drink with Sambuca-like strength. In its glass, the cloudy white ouzo looked like swirls of volcanic ash. Sitting with strangers on a whitewashed island, we raised our glasses: “To Santorini.”