Santorini, Greece

Sunrise over Santorini, sailing into port from the sea. Santorini is a caldera — an extinct volcanic crater. Those two small islands in the photo are small volcanic islands.

If you 'close' the two gaps in the map below, you can see the original circle of the volcano.

Approaching Santorini, I thought I was seeing snow on the tops of the hills. (In 32 degree heat!) But 'the snows' are the white buildings of Santorini. Like Mykonos, Santorini is a Cycladic island, so it shares the same style of architecture: low white houses, flat roofs, blue or red trim. From a distance, on the barren hills, they do look like snow. Particularly if you're short-sighted, like me.

It's an awesome sight from the sea. The cliffs — the layers of volcanic ash — are 300 metres tall, and most are sheer precipices from top to bottom. The collapsed mouth of the volcano is now a deep water-filled centre, about 400 metres deep.

This caldera is the result of many volcanic eruptions over the millennia, including one of the all-time biggest eruptions in human history about 3,600 years ago, at the height of the Minoan civilisation. (More on that civilisation when we get to Heraklion, Crete.)

Santorini has two ports: the old port and the new one called Athinios. Athinios is where all the huge inter-island and mainland ferries dock. We tendered in to Athinios and took a bus to the top of the very steep, very winding roads.

We thought Mykonos was parched, but Santorini seemed even more parched. Not surprising, since the ground is largely volcanic ash, it's a windy island and it gets very little rain. For six months of the year, it gets less than 10 mm of rain per month. The island has desalination plants (they seemed to be everywhere in Greece) but these do not supply drinking water, so every inhabitant on Santorini drinks bottled water. There are 16,000 permanent residents on Santorini; more than 2 million tourists visit Santorini every year.

'Every year' may be a bit deceptive. The summer season is six months long. Very few people travel in winter, when it's grey, 15 degrees and windy. So, think 2 million people in six months.

The only food plants that are grown in any commercial way are olive trees, broad beans and grapes; the grape vines are planted in protruding baskets to protect them from the wind and they sprawl across the ground rather than growing on trellises. A wine called Vinsanto is produced on Santorini, a sweet dessert wine that comes from the small, sweet, sunburned grapes.

Fruits like watermelon, tomatoes and squash are planted between rocks. The seeds are watered when planted and then left to their own devices. The plants survive on the condensation that trickles down the rocks. Our guide Agostina assured us that although the watermelons and the cherry tomatoes are tiny, they taste better than anywhere else.

From the new port, we went to Oia (pronounced ee-a). Oia is the extremely picturesque town with the famous blue-domed churches.

Oia also has very narrow, very steep streets. On the day we were there, there was a queue down one street to take photos of the famous view.

Before you say 'cruise ships', yes, there were indeed three cruise ships in Santorini on that day: our medium-sized ship (about 600 passengers) and two behemoths (5,000 passengers each). We never travel on behemoths. But we were in Oia before the behemoth-delivered passengers arrived, so the crowds that were there excluded the ship passengers. The sardine-experience reminded us of the sardine-experience at Christ the Redeemer in Rio, in January. https://www.julie-anne.online/post/rio-de-janeiro-2 In both cases, there were hundreds of people taking selfies.

Proposition: Tourist congestion is not caused by cruise ships. It's caused by selfies.

Imagine the scenario. We are in a lovely picturesque place with one particularly famous view (call it X). To take a photo of X, one has to stand in a particular spot Y. A lot of people are waiting to get to Y.

• Normal person (e.g. me): I get to Y and admire X. I take two photos and then — aware of the queue behind me — I'll move on.

• Selfie-taker: Every selfie requires on average five shots, with each one being inspected in turn, before the selfie-taker is satisfied that it's fit for IG. So selfie-taker gets to Y and arranges self including pouting, changing angle of head, adjusting hair etc. (45 seconds). Inspection of selfie (30 seconds). Repeat process at least five times = 6 or 7 minutes.

Have you also noticed that selfie-takers feel no obligation to rush?

Ergo, tourist congestion is caused by selfies. Case proved.

The whole process of trying to enjoy the scenery amidst the selfie-takers, plus maybe snap a few shots, was so exhausting that Ken and I retreated to a coffee shop. A jolly clever move, as the shop had a balcony overlooking The View. We like Greek coffee, as long as we remember not to drink more than half-way down the cup and hit the sludge. I gave this baklava a score of 6/10 as it had probably been a little too long in the fridge.

Santorini suffers the same shop-drench as Mykonos. Thank goodness for the shade and peace of the churches! (Fewer selfies, too.)

I'm not saying Santorini isn't pretty. It is very pretty. And the caldera is an amazing feature. It's just that it takes energy to compete with selfies.

But ice-cream helps all pain. Particularly (in the absence of pomegranate gelato) dragon-fruit and watermelon gelato. I bet it's those tiny watermelons that make it taste so good.

After Oia, we travelled to Fira, the main town of Santorini ...

... and meandered our way through the town to the cable car station. Below Fira, on the sea, is the old port. There are three ways to get to the old port from Fira: cable-car, walking or donkey.

Apparently donkeys/mules are still used to carry construction materials from the port to various sites on top of the cliffs in winter ... so perhaps carrying a pretty girl in a white dress taking selfies is not too bad an option in summer. But a donkey wasn't our choice. Once the lights started to come on, we could see how steep and zigzagged the road really was.

Many houses on Santorini are built into the lava rock. Our guide said cave houses have very stable temperatures inside, whether summer or winter. It really is a harsh, barren environment, where people have succeeded in living for centuries. Whch I admire ... but in an increasingly fragile world, can such a bleak natural environment really support 2 million visitors a year?

Leaving Santorini, I still feel like I'm seeing snow on the hills. Dubai-type snow?

My ranking of our Santorini experience, relative to the other ports: 5th out of 6.

More to come.