The caldera of Santorini is on the list of things to see before you die. I do have to second that by saying if you find yourself on the island please visit Akrotiri, the prehistoric city buried by pumice rock and volcanic dust in approximately 1600BC. On this trip I saw Akrotiri twice, once on my own after reading about it and two days later with a guided group. It’s the most fascinating archaeological dig I have seen and I’m a dig buff, and don’t listen to those that compare this dig with Pompeii as there are at least 1,700 years separating the destruction of each of these cities. They have only dug up three per cent of Akrotiri and only the top layer, although it has been stopped for now for lack of money.

The caldera can only be fully appreciated if you come in by boat, otherwise take a day trip by boat to the tips of the volcano, Palia Kameni and Nea Kameni – the sight is truly mind-blowing. You can hang your sight over the walls off Oia or Fira and see the caldera from on board the island and you will also see the old seamen cave homes that have been extended and made into luxury homes and hotels. Even from this angle it is a stunning site.

And that’s where anything worthwhile ends. I have just spent six days there, four days too many for me. I have been there twice before and last time I could actually afford to stay in a caldera hotel, but that was about 30 years ago. So what is wrong with Santorini these days, you ask? Here goes, because it’s a big list on my part.

To be fair to the island and its people, before I sat down to write this I spoke to several people on the island and others in Athens who had been there. The people in Athens dislike Santorini for most of the reasons that I too could not come to terms with.

The caldera hotels are only for the very rich and I mean ‘very’ at an average of €1,000 a night, and that’s a cheap caldera hotel – try €2,679 a night! So when you see the advertisements of Santorini, the photo shoots of models and any other promotion, this is what you are seeing and not where the average person goes, so let’s move on to the ‘real’ island.

Keep in mind that Santorini has a permanent population of 18,000 and these days has approximately one and a half million tourists per year, but the amount of tourism seems not to have been taken into account. The island has little infrastructure. I spoke to locals who tell me they don’t have a proper hospital, only a health centre, and anything serious is airlifted to Athens – on an island that could at any given summer have around two million people on it. Most of the roads are narrow and mostly dirt roads. Only the main arteries going from Fira to Oia and to Akrotiri can be called roads and a modern road to the airport is just being built. The road that took me from the port to my hotel was two-way, narrow and looking down a cliffside.

So you’re saying, ‘but that’s on all the islands’. Well no, it’s not. I had just come from Naxos and I travelled all that beautiful island by road in a taxi and the roads were almost perfect with a tiny fraction of the Santorini tourist crowd.

There are a total of 36 taxis on the island (another version tells me 39), both versions inadequate. The non-Greek tourists are being ripped off (some of us are too), the minute you set your foot in the taxi it costs you €20! But there is another down side; you can never find one. I arrived by boat very late at night from Koufonisi and the taxi I had booked through the hotel was not there, so finally I rang the hotel and the taxi came (it was meant to be there already waiting for me), so I waited, tired and already angry. I knew there and then that my stay was going to be complicated.
Which brings me to the general transport problem. There is a local bus service if you can work out timetables, very few taxis – and expensive, as I have pointed out – which means that the hotels have to have shuttle services which brings up the cost of the stay. The island is saturated with Pullmans, of which some are island tour services and others the local runs, making Fira polluted and congested.

The ‘jewel’ of the island Oia is a jewel no longer. I remember it as a ‘jewel’ with its white-washed buildings and white-washed narrow streets. This time around nothing was white-washed – it was ‘grey- wash’, with dirty streets and ugly shops except for the shops on the main street facing the caldera, geared only towards the rich with expensive labels. No, it was not like Mykonos, and the Santorini residence could learn a thing or two from Mykonos on how to keep a very busy island in the summer clean and retain its charm.

Most unforgiveably, the food was made badly and without pride. This is such a shame as Santorini has a wonderful local food culture but it seems that it’s unavailable in the restaurants. Seafood risotto with uncooked dry rice and prawns that still had the vein in them – totally inedible and very expensive, perhaps because I chose to sit in one of the restaurants facing the caldera. Another day I opted to have one of the local specialities, tomatokeftedes (tomato fritters), they had been fried in old, many-times-used oil and naturally I got a very bad case of heartburn, a condition I have very rarely suffered from in my life. So I chose salads or bought bits and pieces and ate in my room because I had been warned about salmonella attacks – yes, a local warned me.

The hotel I had booked online was too far out from Fira to be able to walk anywhere. Messes hotel is in its inaugural year, run by an amazing young couple, George and Jenny, and it was because of these two people that it was worth staying there. They saw to it that I would get a ride anywhere I needed – often George drove me himself. At breakfast time Jenny would make breakfast individually for her guests, she saw my rice wafers when I knocked back the bread and after explaining I’m gluten free she made rice flour pancakes for me every morning with eggs and bacon, fresh orange juice squeezed as we watched, and a portokalopita (orange pie) to die for. But George and Jenny will have to put on a shuttle mini bus next year because of the taxi problem. They were very accommodating to their guests that did not have a car. If George could he would take you where you wanted to go but he also connected me to a driver who was driving a shuttle for another hotel and when he could I would pay him €20 like I had money to throw away to take me a short distance.

The tourists are treated abysmally, they are being ripped off in every possible way – taxis, food, hotels, coffee (€7 for coffee), water (the island’s water is not drinkable), accommodation, guided tours, you name it; overcharged, no receipt and huge tax evasion. People charge twice the price for water as in any other place I have been to in Greece because they can, because no one cracks down on them. Only once in a kiosk I bought water and was charged the normal 50 cents and also got a receipt. I was also warned to speak Greek, as I would have less chances of being ripped off – in some cases it worked but most of the time they did not care if I spoke Greek, I still got
ripped off.

However, I must not forget – make sure you get to the museum of prehistory in Santorini with all the finds from Akrotiri, so many wonderful finds, especially the wall paintings that have been meticulously lifted and displayed.

But as usual, unacceptable conditions: before you even enter as you are buying your entry ticket there is a handwritten note stuck on the window: ‘η τουαλέτες δεν λειτουργούν’ – toilets out of order – and then for €5 you get to see great treasures badly curated, display cases where the lights don’t work and sometimes flicker, faded labels and faded historical blurbs. The island is making a lot of money, where is it all going if not to keep the island always looking good?

On this trip I also went to Naxos and Koufonisi. My hotels were better and cheaper than Santorini and on Naxos the food was spectacular, the beaches on both islands stunning, the people wonderful and I would go back but I will never go back to Santorini.

Having said all that, if you have never been, go to Santorini, go and see the caldera and see Akrotiri. It will be worth it but don’t stay, get out before the island makes you angry like it made me, but then again, I’m very demanding of what I see and experience on a Greek island.