It's a much longer walk than I thought. The island was small and Oia, at the tip of the island, didn't seem that far away. But as I walked on and on, the tip in sight was always STILL somewhere far away.
A DV camera in my right hand and a snapshot camera in my left hand, it did not make me an action-hero, but rather I made a fool of myself. I was too busy making DV and then taking pictures and then making DV and then... With this 3-in-1 role to play, I had hardly a third of the time to really see with my eyes. As in elsewhere, at times I asked myself, "What the hell am I doing here?" -- I wondered if I had looked at things with my own eyes at all. Rather, I just greedily recorded the scenes with gadgets. And then I had to get to Oia before sunset, so I couldn't take my time to walk leisurely as I usually did, though it's hardly a hurried walk compared to that of package tours.
For my inexperience, the camera movement of my videos was often too fast. As well as the sunset deadline, with the limited number of DV tapes available then, I tried to take it all in with as little time as possible. Unfortunately I had mistaken it for a powerful scanner. The truth is, you just get less -- and nowhere-fast -- if you move too fast with your camera, perhaps not unlike the truth about the pace of travel.
In fact, like most other journeys, I regret I didn't have enough time to see the country. I wish to travel around at a more leisurely pace, even though my pace was already snail-slow compared to others.
It took longer time than I thought to get to Oia, partly because of my self-imposed multiple duties, partly because of the illusory nearness of the tip of the island in sight, and partly because of my stupid curiosity. On the road I saw restaurants flaunting their cactus dishes and I was curious. Spotting some cactuses with their red flowers on the mountain roads, I was stupid enough to touch one such innocent-looking flower. Instead of being greeted by a spirit who would grant me three wishes, soon I felt my fingers burning -- stung by the finest possible stings of the flower, which could only be seen when the fingers had been stung all over with! So I'd spent quite some time trying to pick out the tiny tiny stings, worrying that I might die of their secret poison within 24 hours. In the end it's impossible to pick them all out, and the group of German walkers, whom I took as my temporary guardian angels, accompanying me on the lonely mountain roads, had gone out of sight, and I was left alone in the whole wide mountain area. As for the leftover stings, they miraculously disappeared the next morning. And I survived.
The path was harder to walk than I thought. After the easy walk through the cliff-top villages of Firostefani and Imerovigli, a few parts of the path at first sight seemed almost impossible to walk. They were very slanted and slippery footpaths. What I thought at the beginning as no more difficult than strolling around town turned out to be a hiking trip at the countryside. I was not prepared for it. At first I didn't even expect walking all the way from Fira to Oia. It's just that as I walked on and on through the villages, Oia seemed not so far away and I thought why not walking on to get there. With my cheap pair of sandals not made for hiking, I simply ended up with bleeding toes.
While I was in Santorini, often it was quite cloudy and at times there were drizzles. So it was hopeless for me to take photos of the white white houses against the blue blue sea in charming contrast and to boast them to friends afterwards. Worst, there was no famous sunset of Oia to see, and after all the efforts of the long march, the ending was not glorified. Welcome, the good old consolation of "the process is more important than the outcome".
The walk was nevertheless fruitful. At least I had learnt about two edible plants. The bad guy was the cactus (and its malicious flower). The good guy was the fig fruit, which could be seen on many roads in Greece. The best thing was that you could easily pick them and eat them. Isn't that sweet?
Watch my video:
No comments:
Post a Comment