Santorini Island, Mediterranean Border

I've always been wanting to write a blog about an island, but never really knew which islands there were to right about because there was always too many to count. But then I realized that there was this one island that I've always wanted to go to, Santorini. I didn't want to go there just because the name sounded cool, but because of the marvelous colors and the scenery is magnificent. 

But to be honest just looking at the pictures in magazines or surfing the images on google makes it look a lot better because it's in a foreign land that not many people mention about and it's just really cool to find out secrets about this fascinating island. 

Santorini was named by the Latin Empire in the thirteenth century and was a reference to Saint Irene, which was the name of an old cathedral in the village of Perissa. The name Santorini is a contradiction of the name Santa Irini and before then, it was known as Kalliste (the most beautiful one), then it was named Strongyle (the circular one), then Thera. But the colloquial name Santorini is still in popular use. During the Ottoman Empire's domination of the Aegean Sea, the Turkish name for the island was "Santurin."

Santorini is an island off the southern Aegean Sea which is about 120 miles off the southeast coast of mainland Greece.  It forms part of the southernmost  part of the Cyclades group of islands with a population of 15,000 people. Other islands within the Santorini region include the islands of Nea Kameni, Palaia, Kameni, and Christiana. 

Santorini are the remains after an enormous volcanic eruption that destroyed the earliest settlements on the island before. There's a rectangular lagoon that's about 7.5 by 4.3 miles and is surrounded by a 900 ft high, steep cliffs on three sides. The island slopes downward to the Aegean Sea. On the other side of the lagoon, it's separated from the sea by another island called Therasia. 

The most active volcanic center is located in the South Aegean Volcanic Arc, though what remains now is a water -filled caldera. The volcanic arc is 310 miles long with a width about 12-25 miles wide. The island is the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the whole world. The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash  that are hundreds of meters deep. 

You might of thought that water was easily accessible in Santorini back in the day but it's really wasn't! Santorini didn't have any rivers and water was scarce up until the 1990s when local citizens filled water cisterns from the rain that fell  on roofs and courts Which I personally thought was gross but I guess that's how they conserved water. But in the early 21st century a desalination plant provided running water to many houses and because rain is very rare on the island from spring and autumn, many plants depend on the moisture that's provided by the common, morning fog that makes dew on the ground!

A few more secrets are that Santorini is a favorite island across the entire planet and on the island of Santorini, man and nature live in harmony. Born from the fires of a volcano, today it's a land of sea and wind with villages on it's rocky cliffs! (556 words)