"Nea Kameni" Nea Kameni Island by Kaspian

Travel Dates: June 2 2007.

Rocks, Rocks, More Rocks... Hey look, a flower! ...No wait, it's just a rock.

I don't mean to sound harsh but Nea Kameni is harsh!

Harsh \Harsh\ (h[aum]rsh), adjective.: 1) unpleasantly rough or jarring to the senses. 2) cruel or severe. 3) of climate or conditions/difficult to survive in; hostile.

Other descriptors that come to mind are "barren", "wasteland", "badlands", "dead zone", and "Hell".

The Damned On The Path to Hell (2007)

At one point in time, Santorini was a circular island but a volcano erupted in it's centre. The volcanic explosions that followed caused massive devastation, killed an entire civilization, and sank all the land around the volcano into the sea. This event is what created the beautiful bay (caldera) currently at the town of Fira. Nea Kameni itself was formed during an eruption sometime later during the 16th Century and has grown steadily over the years through further eruptions.

There is recent strong archaeological evidence that this may in fact have been the location of the fabled "City of Atlantis". My brother who is an archaeologist specializing in Roman, Nabetean, and Greek history and who is also a great skeptic of everything, actually agrees with this point of view. I take his word on everything and you would too if you ever met him because his IQ is about a billion.

Although small plumes of sulphur smoke can be seen rising from small fissures here and there among the rocks, the last eruption happened in 1950 and it was minor.

Lighting Bolt Rock (2007)

It's hot as hell here! It's uninhabited. There's nothing but rocks, hills, and rock dust. The dust makes your shoes and legs turn a gray colour. There's no fresh water, no plants, no town, no nothing.... Nothing to see really.

A hike to the crater centre wasn't much more enlightening because it looked just like another valley among a hundred hills of stone.

Overall, I think you could get the same effect in your own backyard by dumping a few bags of charcoal onto your patio and walking around on it for awhile. Or, visit your local gavel pit or open coal mine. Mildly entertaining, but I think you'd be better off spending a half-day in one of the many cute Greek towns in the area. Perissa was nice. ...Yeah, visit Perissa instead.

• Pros:Geologists will be fascinated!
• Cons:Rocks! Black rocks!
• In a nutshell:Rocks, sulphur, intense heat? Isn't that what Hell looks like?