Poppi gave us the bus schedule and we rode down to Kamari where the black sand beach is. It looks a lot like Lake Superior stone; smooth, dark basalt. We journaled there for a couple of hours and then caught the bus up to Fira, the capital. We found some kebaps for lunch and the waiter there was really nice and talked to us for a while. After leaving, we were on a mission to find donkeys. We needed to ride the donkeys. We would have ridden the donkeys up someone's driveway if it meant we could ride donkeys. We finally found them, after asking for directions a billion times, not by virtue of good directions, but rather our keen senses of smell :)
This donkey ride was not the peaceful, idyllic ride I had in mind. Rather, it was terrifying. Kind of like the Wild Thing at Valley Fair. The donkey men gypped us out of 5euro by saying that we couldn't walk down then ride the donkeys up, so we aggreed to ride them down and up. This hill is steep. You don't realize how steep until you're pitched forward on a donkey who's running down. The donkeys in our train were tied together and poor Sienna, her donkey was at the back and older and slower than the rest, but since he was chained to my speed demon, he had to keep up and was slipping down the steps. I was at the front of the pack and all I could hear the whole was down was Kayla laughing out of sheer terror and Sienna making this high pitched whiney sound. We got some good video with audio to prove it :)
So about half way down the leader donkey man heard Kayla and Sienna freaking out and turned around to ask if we wanted to turn around and go up. They were more than relieved to do so. I was a little bummed and wanted to ride all the way down. So donkey man unhooked the donkeys so they weren't tied together anymore and they started running up the hill! Literally sprinting. Kicking donkey butt and taking names. My donkey was checking other donkeys into the wall and running so hard to get up that hill. I like to imagine he was just really competitive, which I can respect.
After our terror of a donkey experience, we wandered around Fira some more until we found this little place that had a terrace overlooking the caldera. So we went up and ordered a pizza to share with the intention of sitting there and watching the sunset. We failed to notice that it was only 4 when we ordered and sunset isn't until 6:30, so by the time we were done eating, there was a good hour plus to wait until the sunset and we felt too awkward to continue sitting at this restaurant without ordering anything else, so we left to wander again.
We ended up finding a grocery store where we bought some greek appertif and found a little spot on the side of the cliff to watch the sunset. There was this little ledge there and I was trying to hoist myself up on it when I felt something wet on my hand. I looked down to see this yellow puddle (which Kayla convinced me was cat pee) and I tried my darndest to wipe it off on the wall, but it was still gross. I didn't use that hand for the rest of the night and probably would have sold my left kidney for a wet wipe. We passed the time by playing Hot Seat and then watched the sun set over the little islands.
We went to find the bus stop and got on. We told the driver that we needed to get off at this little, obscure stop, but, of course, he forgot and we ended up having to ride all the way to Kamari at the south end of the island and then come back up towards Fira. We were wiped by the end of that and had no energy left to go look for Kostas, so we all took hot showers (we were still erally smelly) and went to sleep.
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