The Donkeys of Santorini: A Unique and Challenging Journey to Fira

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Santorini, the last stop on our Greek cruise, was one I had really been looking forward to. The photos I see online from Santorini are always stunning, and every person I’ve ever talked to who’s been there has loved it.  

Santorini is a volcanic island with a caldera, formed by a massive volcanic eruption around 3,600 years ago. The caldera is surrounded by steep cliffs, giving the island its dramatic landscape. This also makes it a more challenging port to access. When I learned that it was a tender port, my anxiety spiked. My claustrophobia makes it difficult for me to be on small boats, and every time I’ve had to ride a tender boat in port, I have to pull out every anti-anxiety tactic from my toolbox to deal with the stress. (I envy all of you who are not bothered by these things!)

In addition to taking a tender to get to the port itself, we would then have to get from the base of the caldera and cliffs of the island up to the town of Fira, the capital. There are three methods for getting to the top of the island: taking a cable car, walking, or riding a donkey. 

The donkeys of Santorini are (in)famous and a longstanding mode of transportation on this island. We did not want to ride a donkey – outside of the ethical ambiguity, we don’t have experience riding horses and didn’t feel comfortable with doing so. The thought of taking the cable car made my heart race with anxiety – a small cramped space I can’t escape that could also come crashing down? No thank you. So our initial plan was to walk. 

But plans change. 😬

I’d been psyching myself up all week for this port. I took some beta blockers that morning, limited my caffeine intake, ate bland foods, listened to my anti-anxiety playlist, and practiced deep breathing. 

We waited until mid-day to board the tender, thinking (correctly) that most of the passengers would be getting off earlier in the day for excursions. We sat on the outside portion of the tender, which definitely helped me feel less trapped. Skyler enjoyed the ride, and I did not have a panic attack. I was feeling pretty good by the time we disembarked at the port. 

The port area was narrow with dozens of shops and small restaurants. Everything was in full sun and it was hot. Definitely in the low 90s, which felt all that much hotter in the direct sunlight. Good thing we remembered our sunscreen! We searched for the entrance to the cobblestone stepped pathway that zigzagged up the cliff-front so we could get to the top. We found it, and Justin asked someone how long it takes to walk up. “Oh, about forty five minutes,” was the reply. 

Yikes. Our kid was already crabby. And though we knew we could handle the forty-five minute walk in the heat and sunlight by ourselves, we also could foresee our five-year-old having a meltdown 10 minutes into it. “And I’m not carrying his ass up this mountain,” my husband said.

I took a deep breath and said, “Fine. Let’s do the cable car. The ride is only a few minutes up and I should be able to control my anxiety long enough to get up there.” 

But that’s when we noticed the long line for the cable car snaking along the sidewalk. Hundreds of people in this line. I asked an American woman about ¼ of the way from the back end how long they’d been standing in line. “About thirty minutes.” I blanched. She had another hour or two ahead of her. In full sun. There was no way that we would last, and with that much time to anticipate and stress over the cable car ride, I’d be a wreck if/when we finally made it to the cable car. 

(We learned on our way down that the cable car only carries 36 people at a time. With FOUR cruise ships in port, it’s no wonder the lines were so long!)

At this point, Skyler was getting crabbier by the moment. He was hungry, and this kid’s hanger is no joke. We needed to get to the top and find a restaurant pronto. 

“So I guess…. The donkeys then?” I pointed hesitantly at the donkey station. Justin grimaced at me, shrugging. “I guess so.”

How bad could it be?

While I ran to an ATM to grab cash to pay for the ride, Justin inquired as to how long it would take to ride the donkeys up. Supposedly it would only take ten minutes. 

So we climbed the few steps of the donkey stand and got in line behind a few other tourists. Justin went first, handing over his 10 euros and climbing on his saddle. One of the donkey men shouted a command, and the donkey started walking up the path. Okay, so these donkeys were pros. They knew what they were doing. 

I handed over my ten euros and the donkey man said, “Mama up first.” He helped me up and let me get settled before he handed me Skyler. We barely had grabbed hold of the saddle handle before the donkey followed his friends (coworkers??) and we were on our way. 

There was a group of about 7 or 8 of us who all started up the path at the same time: the three of us on our two donkeys, a few Japanese tourists who seemed to be traveling together, an Eastern European couple each on their own donkeys, and a fellow American. At first I was impressed that the donkeys just seemed to know what to do, walking on their own accord without an apparent leader. But then I quickly realized that these are still autonomous animals who will do what they want when they want. 

Have you ever seen or played a mechanical horse derby game in Vegas? I felt like we were in our own very slow, very hot version of this derby race. The donkey that began in front ended up in the back. Donkeys would just stop and start whenever they wanted, sometimes parking themselves in the middle of the path, other times making it all the way to the end of a zig, walking themselves into the wall of the corner and stopping before the zag. There was no rhyme or reason to their stopping and starting, and nothing we did would encourage them to do one thing or another. We were at the mercy of whatever these donkeys wanted to do. 

And these donkeys definitely owned the pathway, which was the same pathway we would have had to walk up. We were both immediately glad that we had decided not to walk because the path was a lot steeper than it initially looked, with uneven sloping steps, missing cobblestones, and several metric tons of donkey shit. (Yes, I’m exaggerating but my god, it’s as if no one ever bothered cleaning up the donkey excrement!) We witnessed several people slip and lose their balance on their way down the path. And worse, the donkeys would cut off pedestrians or corner them against the walls. Our donkey completely terrified one woman as he pushed her tightly up against the wall and there was nothing I could do to make him stop. 

At this point, FINALLY, we heard the shouting voices and ringing bells of the donkey men. Thankfully, they don’t whip or hit the donkeys into action. Instead, they use a combination of these bells on sticks and shouted Greek instructions to guide them. We made more steady progress up the path once the men arrived, walking up the path, leading a few passenger-less donkeys with them. (See the video at the end of this post for video of this.)

Skyler, normally a chatterbox who you can’t get to shut up, was mostly quiet during the ride. In the very beginning, he laughed a bit, calling the donkeys crazy. “These donkeys are so stinky.” But by half-way up the path, he had stopped smiling, only whispering to me occasionally. 

“Mama, I don’t like this.”
“No one likes this, baby. Just hold on tight. We’ll be there soon.”

“I want to get off this donkey.”
“Me too, kiddo. Me too.”

When we finally made it to the top, we had to wait several minutes to actually disembark the donkeys because there was a line and only a few donkey men at the top to help people get off. Justin had ended up a few donkeys ahead of us, and my donkey decided to crowd one of his coworkers, pushing tightly up against the donkey with the fellow American. Our legs were smashed against one another, and we made some awkward jokes, both of us emotionally and physically exhausted from the short ride up. Just then, this woman’s mother approached us, drench in sweat and breathing hard. She had opted to hike up the mountain, leaving about twenty minutes before her daughter’s donkey ride began. The woman whose leg I was still touching handed her mom her phone. “Here Mom, please take my photo. Because there is no way in hell I’m ever getting on another donkey ever again.”

Amen, sister. 

It may have only taken 15 or 20 minutes, but it felt like an hour. Every muscle in my body remained tense and locked in action trying to keep me and my son from falling off this donkey – and over the too-low wall, plummeting to our deaths down the steep rocky cliffs. I kept reminding myself to engage your core!!!! By the time I got off the donkey, my body hurt. (The next day, I felt like I’d overdone it at the gym.) 

“Can we please go find a restaurant, sit down, and have a drink?” I said to my husband. I don’t even like day drinking (alcohol makes me so sleepy) but I needed something to take off the edge. 

So that’s how we made it to the top of Santorini so we could explore the town of Fira. We hung out at a restaurant for a little over an hour, each of us sipping our drinks and eating a little food. The views from our table were truly stunning and felt like a satisfying reward for our efforts. The photos dont even do it justice, but suffice to say that these are unedited, unfiltered photos. That deep ocean blue is the real deal. I could stare at it for hours and just let myself get lost. 

But we didnt ride a donkey all the way to the top of this caldera just to sit around! We wanted to explore a bit. 

Remember those four cruise ships? Yeah. I don’t think this town can handle 8000 tourists at once. It was crowded. And hot. We meandered the labyrinthine cobblestone streets for a while, stopping to snap more pictures of the gorgeous views and visit the souvenir stores since it was our last cruise port. 

The heat and sun combined with the stress and physical exertion from riding the donkeys of Santorini had worn us out more than we expected. After about an hour of exploring we decided to head back. But there was no way I was going to voluntarily ride another donkey, nor did I want to slip and slide my way down the path through donkey shit while also trying to avoid getting run over by a donkey. This left the cable car as the only way down.

Thankfully, the line was not too long; we waited about thirty minutes and it was all shaded. When it was our turn, we crammed into one of the gondolas with a family from Italy, and gazed at the welcoming blue waters below us and watched people try to out-maneuver the donkeys on the zigzag path. I looked at the faces of the other tourists riding the donkeys of Santorini – grimaces, frowns, not a single smile. 

Our time in the Santorini port of Fira was challenging to say the least and not an experience I care to repeat. It was also the final domino in a series of realizations that every single place we visited on the cruise felt over touristed and like a Greek theme park catering to tourists. I decided then and there that we would have to return to Greece one day, but visit some of the lesser known, quieter, maybe less exciting islands so that we could really soak up the local vibes. So next time we visit Greece, if we return to Santorini which everyone claims is so magical, we will arrive via airplane, visit other parts of the island, and stay as far away from the donkeys of Santorini as possible.