Santorini

Today's stop was Santorini, Greece. It's a beautiful island, and I wish I had more time to spend here. Instead of sightseeing, I decided to go scuba diving instead. This is my first dive outside the US (everything's in metric!) as well as the first one in a long time where I have not used my own equipment. And eventhough the sun didn't cooperate (it was overcast and cloudy all day), visibility in the water was still excellent (easily over 60ft).

My first dive was at the New Volcano. There aren't many fishes out here, and the ones that are swimming around are all small/young. According to some other divers, this is because the area has been overfished. The most interesting fauna I saw were fire worms, which were rather fun to watch. The highlight of the dive, however, was the wreck (my first) at the end, at a depth of 30ft. It's supposed to be one of the first steel ships in the area. No one knows why it sank, and the top two theories are sabotage and insurance fraud, with the latter being the heavy favorite.

My second dive was a wall dive off Caldera Beach. The highlight of this one was when we stopped to feed the fishes some bread. I literally had a swarm of little fishes around me, nibbling at both the bread I was holding in my hands and my hands themselves. They were so intent on the bread that I could actually reach out and smack them around ;)

The trade off for scuba diving was that I didn't have the time to go to Oia. Apparently, lunch was simply amazing according to my mom and my sister. *sigh* At least we have a few more Greek ports on the itinerary.