The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
On an island of Insta gratification, I feel free
After a midlife retreat from social media, Sarah Rodrigues heads to Santorini to see if the world’s most photogenic location will break her resolve – and finds that it is even better without the need to post
On Palea Kameni, a volcanic promontory in the caldera of Santorini, lives a hermit named Sostis. Aged around 70, he spends his days fishing; tending to his crops, goats and chickens; paying his devotions, and making feta. Occasionally, he also accepts visitors for a glass of wine and some storytelling as colourful as his brightly hued boat.
During the course of our sailing trip with local outfit Caldera Yachting, we didn’t pay Sostis a visit, but the mere romance of his proximity was compounded by our swim in the sulphurinfused waters around the catamaran. Despite having spent many pandemicclouded months lamenting our varying degrees of loneliness, the idea of splendid solitude in even more splendid surroundings, of shucking off the oddly limiting coils of work and WiFi, was suddenly as appealing as tequila slammers 10 years after the night you swore off them forever.
Local lore has it that Sostis adopted hermitude to retreat from a broken relationship, but if my impressions of Oia were anything to go by, then it would be just as easy to believe that one might withdraw simply to get away from the Instagram-obsessed crowds who teem in its narrow lanes. Is it possible to find solitude, without resorting to Sostis-style extremes, on an island so beleaguered?
Our visit fell in early October, well past the height of the season, but a morning walk – yes, morning; not even the famed golden hour of sunset – past cafés and dragon-cave-like jewellery stores required multiple pauses behind people engaged in photo-taking. The streets of Oia are, in places, steep and uneven; it was apparent that high heels and gauzily gothic dresses worn by some in the vicinity had not exactly been donned for practicality.
I couldn’t judge them too harshly: over the years, my own relationship with social media had segued from casual to complicated, passionate and ultimately damaging, with real-life relationships adversely affected by its omnipresence. My trip to Santorini marked a year since swearing off Instagram; a move sparked as much by lockdown ennui (I have nothing interesting to post and I don’t think you do, either) as by avoiding the blurring of lines between pixels and people, and the recognition that, in a locked-down world, I didn’t much care about what complete strangers were doing, and wanted any time online to be spent engaging with people I actually knew.
So it wasn’t with an entirely critical eye that, from the hot tub on the terrace of my suite at Omma, in the quieter and more elevated Imerovigli, my gaze drifted from the hazy blaze of a cloudy sunset to the sugar-cube buildings cascading down the edges of distant Oia; sugar cubes that swarmed, even later in the season, with formic activity. As darkness fell, the jewels of electric light formed a dense veil over the area; markedly different from the haphazardly scattered gems dotting my immediate vicinity. There was no question in my mind about where I would rather be.
Much has been written about Santorini’s problems with over-tourism, from those in positions of authority warning that the island is at saturation point, to writers recognising the impact that snap-happy holidaymakers have had upon their own vacations. Even away from the press, and even away from the Insta-famous vistas of Oia, the influence of influencers was apparent: I can think of few places where I’ve seen signs exhorting visitors not to climb on the roof – much less the roof of a church.
We passed a young woman garbed in metres of dazzling blue fabric, billowing photogenically behind her – aided by the hands of an assistant, like a trainfluffing bridesmaid, to catch the breeze. It made a striking image, certainly: the drama of sapphire satin against azure sea and whitewashed walls – but noticing that this particular wall bore a “private area” sign, plus knowing that these hour-long photoshoots cost upwards of £400, was somewhat dismaying, as was the bottlenecking caused by just as many people stopping to capture the photoshoot on their phones as they were stopping to capture themselves.
Make no mistake: I, too, was taking multiple pictures on my phone; who wouldn’t, in such glorious surroundings? Those chalky cubist structures, bulging, here and there, with a blue dome, and spilling down the sheer volcanic cliffs towards the water, were every bit as beguiling as the postcards and Instagram posts – but there was a freedom that came with randomly snapping on the move, rather than fretting over framing and composition. It was a freedom that I had no concept of when I first set off to explore a vast and smartphone-free world, my rucksack packed along “one on, one off, one wash” lines – no undulating satin to be seen.
There was a freedom that also came with only glancing over my photos when I was back in the cool white of my cave-inspired room at Omma, rather than stopping in the street to edit, filter, straighten, fret and retake. Granted, most of my photos were lousy, but they were fit for the purposes of WhatsApping to my family – and isn’t it connection with loved ones, rather than likes from strangers, that matters?
I suppose it depends on what you want from a getaway: for many, these days, “holiday” seems to be synonymous with “week-long photoshoot”. Indeed, a few years ago in the Maldives, I was fascinated by a woman who posed in endless bikinis and kaftans for a camera-wielding partner – yet never once entered the water.
For me, those few days of Greek island living were a gift – to travel during a time when travel was still tricky; an opportunity to top up on some sunshine before the long winter months; to swim, to eat and to drink.
None of these things were in short supply: we feasted nightly on sparklingly fresh seafood, accompanied by the ubiquitous salads topped with chunks of feta that resemble the island’s architecture. Delicious wines accompanied our food: thanks to its volcanic landscape and various innovations aimed at reducing the impact of low rainfall, harsh winds and hot sunshine, Santorini is a muchrespected producer. At a tasting hosted by Vassaltis Vineyards, I lost my heart to the intensely quaffable Aidani, as well as the resident cat.
Wine fuelled our decision to wander down to Bar To Navagio after a lengthy and sensational meal at local taverna Anogi. Here, we moved to cocktails mixed by a lugubrious barman, whose face was transformed by rare but dazzling smiles. “Real drinks for genuine people” is the bar’s motto – and it fits.
From the completely unselfconscious gyrations and singalongs of its denizens, to the headphone-adorned DJ, whose fierce concentration slipped into a beam every time he realised he had nailed a crowd-pleaser; from the woman drunkenly dancing in her chair, eyes closed and hands engaged in occult-like movements, to the woman at the bar determinedly tallying receipts, it would have been hard to imagine a more refreshingly, unrestrainedly, ego-free environment.
Sure, it would have looked like one hot mess in an Instagram post – but why travel to Santorini just for that?
The world lost nothing by not seeing a photo of me gazing faux-wistfully out to sea, but I gained everything from stroking stray animals, bellylaughing with new friends, basking in the smile of the taverna owner who placed a blanket around my shoulders, and jumping, inelegantly, from a boat. Oh – and, incidentally, Santorini sunsets are glorious, whatever your vantage point.