Journey to the Top of Santorini

“You have three options: you walk up zee hill here, you take zee trolley, or you ride zee donkey up zis hill” said our tour guide.  I quickly scanned my options before making the decision.  The so-called “trolley” was dangling hundreds of feet in the air, on what looked like a decrepit wire, over the sparkling Aegean.  With hundreds of individuals venturing to the top on donkeys, walking looked to be a dangerous enterprise.  I was now left with one last option… to ride “zee donkey”. 

I was next in line; my feet felt as if they were glued to the platform and honestly, at the time I was hoping they were.  In front of me stood a red-faced Greek man yelling his instructions in Greek, of which I didn’t know a single word, and it became the point where instincts took over.  I gathered that to get up this hill I would need to make it to the edge of the platform and take a leap of faith onto my designated donkey.  There were no guides for the donkeys because they knew their way up the path which meant that jumping at the right moment was key; one moment late would land me in a pile of dirt, with my donkey leaving me in the dust. 

Somehow, I made it onto the donkey and began the journey to the top.  If I had made my decision based on which route seemed the safest, I began to second-guess my judgment.  But when you are halfway up a rocky Cliffside on the back of a somewhat unruly creature, there’s no going back.  All I could do was hold on tight and hope for the best.  Let’s just say I was a little less than thrilled when my donkey decided to stop for a quick snack on the side of the hill, dangling me just over the side of the cliff.  About three quarters of the way up, I was beginning to find hope that I was in fact going to make it there.  This occurred to me mere seconds before the stampede of donkeys that had just dropped off their passengers made it swiftly back down to retrieve someone new.  It was a whirl of chaos and anxiety and the scattered shoes along the trail suddenly made a lot more sense.  The last few minutes felt like hours but the donkey made one last turn and planted its hooves on flat ground.  I felt as if I had lived to tell the tale and quickly hopped off to join the other members of my group. 

After the tours that day, most of us took the trolley back down because we weren’t quite sure we could handle the reverse journey on the donkeys.  But at the end of the day, it was all anyone could talk about.  Out of all of the souvenirs and the tours that day, it was the donkeys that made the trip.  It was truly the experience of a lifetime; I mean how many people can say they have ridden a donkey up the Cliffside of a Grecian island overlooking the Aegean Sea.  I am glad that I made the decision I did that day and wouldn’t take it back for anything, it was definitely an experience worth having and quite the journey.