Feeling much better this morning after two days on the sofa doing very little but drinking lots of vitamin C stuff, water, and not much else. So, normal service is being resumed, and being resumed early, because it was too hot to sleep for long. I can do that later.
Here’s a rather gloomy ramble I was wondering about during the small hours. I read a report the other day that on one day of the week, 11,000 cruise ship tourists were deposited onto the island of Santorini for the day. This caused a debate among top officials, and the mayor of the island later declared that as of 2025, the number allowed on the island per day would be limited to 8,000. (In 2021, the census population of the island was put at 15,480.) As you can see, this photo taken from Ekathimerini shows just how pleasant it is to be a tourist in such a situation.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1244697/santorini-concerned-about-overtourism-as-11000-cruise-travelers-flood-the-island/Other news outlets gave the story different titles such as, ‘Tourism Armageddon,’ ‘Santorini Overrun with 11,000 Cruise Ship Tourists,’ and ‘Greek Island Invaded.’ That last one was the yUK rag the Daily Express who apparently have a thing about islands being invaded. To me, the situation looks very much like rats leaving a non-sinking ship to experience real life on a Greek island. Ha! As if.
Yes I know, everyone has to make money, and we only have a few months per year in which to do it, but that’s the problem isn’t it? “To make money.”
Back in 2007, Neil and I were lucky enough to visit Machu Picchu and, later, the Galapagos Islands, both, even then, victims of their own success. Or rather, the success of those who make money. Various guides told us how the authorities wanted to restrict the numbers of tourists because they were damaging the local ecosystem, but the countries/areas/locals had grown so used to and dependent on the income, they could not. The end result? Well, it will be something like this:
We have a gorgeous fishing bay on our quiet island where no-one is very well off, but where we now have the means to learn what’s happening in other parts of the world. Hey! Over there, they’ve opened up their village to tourists. Let’s do the same, and we will have no more money worries. They can stay at Manolis’ house, and eat at Aris’ taverna, and we’ll set up a new bar, so they don’t worry the old boys at the kafeneion.
Time passes.
Hey, Manolis’ place is full, we need to build another, so we’ll buy out Kostas’ land, and he can move his goats elsewhere, up the hill maybe? Then, we’ll put up sunbeds so British tourists can complain about the cost. Nice new TV by the way.
Time continues to pass.
We need your allotment for a car park because Stelios’ is doing car rentals now, oh, and we need to put a fire truck in there because Kostas’ goats have eaten all the vegetation and the land’s not being irrigated properly, and we need to meet European safety standards, so the new hotel can be built by foreign investors. But it’s okay, the sunbeds will stay at only €5.00 each for the day. Unless you’re at the front of the beach, in which case, it’s €15.00 because we have to give a backhander to the authorities as we’re not supposed to be putting anything on the beach at all. Watch out for that jet ski…
Time drags on.
Sorry, Maria, no room at the inn, it’s full of Northern Europeans paying over the odds for a studio, and €25.00 for a sun bed but that does include a 0.50c bottle of water. The mountain burnt last year, but we’re going to build another hotel on it anyway. Ah, there’s the cruise ships coming in. That’ll be 11,000 souvlakis and chips, Christos, get the fryer on…
And so the nightmare grows until it inevitably has to go bang.
I’m not saying that’s what will happen to Symi, but history does repeat itself because we humans are dumb animals who don’t learn. Once, it was boat building that made the island wealthy – the goal of everyone it seems. However, they cut down all the trees to build the boats and make the cash. Then, it was sponge diving that brought in the money and attracted 30,000 people to live here, but they took away all the sponges to sell them, and they were never replaced. Now, it’s tourism which (mainly) feeds the livelihoods of the residents, but what happens when tourism destroys the island, or people no longer come because of finances, wars, whatever? What comes next? Another decline? If so, this time the mansion houses will stand empty and rotting because the holiday-homers who once owned them can no longer afford to keep them. History repeats until it implodes, and it starts with 11,000 experience-hungry tourists per day.
