GREEK, BUT ISLANDS APART

We are on Atlantis, the lost continent, gazing dazedly from the veranda of our hotel room (yes, gentle reader, Atlantis has hotels) at the flat roof terraces below, blindingly whitewashed, dappled with parasols, the milk-white expanses punctuated by apricot and azure domes of churches flying the Greek flag. Below and beyond this panorama of sunbaked buildings and cliffs, the glassy, indigo wilderness of the Aegean Sea shimmers under the rays of Phoebus’ fiery chariot. The vista leaves prose helpless, though I’m game to try.

Victoria, my companion, and I are here with our New York choral group performing on the island as part of a summer concert tour.

Such is Santorini’s spell that more than one romance has bloomed between choral members here on prior visits, and at least one wedding followed. It may have something to do with the pull of Atlantis, which Plato wrote about as a utopia, an island Elysium, that vanished without a trace long before his time. He got the geography wrong, placing Atlantis in what we call the Atlantic. It might have been here, in the Cyclades islands of the southeastern Mediterranean.

The island predecessor of Santorini, called Stronghyli, all but vanished in the 15th century BC. It was shaken by Poseidon, god of the ocean, and it erupted in a volcanic spasm that shut out the light on lands far and near. The volcano’s crater sank into the sea, sending wave after wave of tsunamis across the Mediterranean. All that survived was the crescent fragment and flanks of the volcano’s eastern rim, on which modern Santorini perches and on which Victoria and I now stand, transported, watching boats sail in to the port below.

We flew into Santorini’s small airport. Most visitors come by sea, on island-hopping ferries or cruise ships stopping for a day. Their view of Santorini is jaw-dropping. The precipitous black, red, greenish and off-white cliffs, like a mad chef’s layer cake, soar almost 1,000 feet above the tiny port. The dazzling white crown at the summit is Thira, the main town.

Caldera: caldron, the depression of a volcano. Across the six-mile-wide crater, two island shards mark the volcano’s western rim.

In 1956 an earthquake associated with volcanic activity did serious damage to Thira, but the rebuilding had an upside in making the island modern as well as picture-perfect to attract tourists.

And so they come, by the boatload, decanted ashore in Thira’s minuscule port, thence by donkey train up shallow, zigzag steps to the town, or on foot (those fit enough for 566 steps and quick moves around the donkey flops), or in two minutes by the cable car, which can haul 800 customers per hour up to the attractions of Thira.

“Over-chic, overbuilt, overpriced,” says Marty Finkelman, one of our group. This does not deter him from returning as often as he can to the house he owns here.

In wintertime, after the summer holiday crowds have left, Santorini’s resident population of 7,000 diminishes, not a few departing for work in Athens. The tourist population in high season feels like 7 million. Many are in their teens and 20s, suntanned and half naked. Most of them presumably sleep under the stars, if they sleep at all. They are here for the sun, sea and fellowship of their peers, not for the gold bracelets and silver necklaces that sell well to more mature, better-heeled visitors.

The young have a pulsing night life--clubs, bars, poly-sexual discos that advertise their closing time simply as “late,” meaning well after 2 a.m. For the less energetic there are pensions and hotels ranging from decent to luxury, splendid Greek cuisine, shops, museums, wineries and stunning views that cry out, “Paint me! Photograph me!”

Island-hoppers would do well to give Santorini a minimum of two days for exploring by rental car or moped, guided tour or the reliable, if dusty, public bus service. For cruise ship passengers who arrive and depart in a day, one day is better than no day at all. I can believe that they leave making plans to return.

Shops selling jewelry, icons, T-shirts and jolly postcards of classical satyrs in a state of arousal cram the narrow flagstone streets, along with tourists beyond count, and too many stray cats and dogs. (One of our chorus was awakened in the night by a cat that flew through the open window and onto his bed.) Restaurants have names such as Dionysos, Adonis and Flame of the Volcano, which sounds like an old Marlene Dietrich movie. We pass up, excellent though it may be, a Mexican bistro called McZorba.

We hear that the nearby island of Mykonos is even livelier with trendy international youth, but one Greek island at a time, we say. We’ll take Santorini while it’s here. If the next earthquake or eruption doesn’t finish it off, sooner or later it’s going to sink under the weight of discerning holiday-makers.

We only wish we had found the island 20 years ago, 10 even, before the influx of all these tourist bodies (such as ours). But never mind the thronged masses, the island puts us in high good humor. How could it not? The pellucid light, the gaudy sunsets and sunrises astonish. The wine and the tasty little tomatoes are the finest in Greece, according to the Greeks, and who are we to disagree?

“Drink our Santorini red and white whines,” urges the menu of one taverna, and unwhiningly we do so. Outside town, on a walk through vegetationally challenged countryside, we come upon a vineyard, the grapes heaped in mounds on the earth as if picked and abandoned. A closer look reveals that the grapes are still growing. These vines are trained to grow low because of Santorini’s varieties of ferocious winds, each with its own name, not that we encounter any.

The name Santorini doesn’t sound Greek to us. Greek officialdom, agreeing, would like the island to be known by its ancient and official name, Thira (often rendered in English guidebooks as Fira), but has made no headway. Not that the name Santorini is spanking new, just foreign. It dates from the 10th century, when Venetians sailed in and found that Thira’s patron saint was St. Irene, who died here in 304. And so the island became Santorini.

To investigate beyond Thira town we board public buses, these seeming the safest bet. Some brave souls rent cars, but the narrow, twisting roads are hazardous, and who knows if the summer youth on rented mopeds, or too many to a car, might not be nearly comatose with sun and ouzo? Thira’s health clinic does a steady business in patching and bone-setting. We saw more than one tourist departing with unblemished cast and shiny crutches.

The sweltering, standing-room-only bus to Oia on the island’s northern tip carries us thither smoothly. The half-hour trip might have been even pleasurable but for the company of French adolescents, surely the world’s noisiest.

Oia, Santorini’s second town--there are only two towns and some villages on this pumice rock--hums predictably with visitors, but is smaller and calmer than Thira by far. Behind the desk at the visitors’ kiosk is a patient, lovely young woman who looks exactly like the classical Greek beauties painted on museum amphorae--identical eyes, nose, blackest hair, sun-kissed complexion.

At an otherwise unmemorable outdoor cafe, an alarming donkey approaches us to say hello as we lunch off fava bean soup and a spicy yogurt dip that we can’t get too much of, and a salad of feta cheese, cucumber, onion, olives and juicy tomatoes picked that morning. How does one tell a donkey “Be off!” in Greek?

Akrotiri, at the southern end of the island, is an astonishing Bronze Age city preserved in ash and molten muck from the explosion 3,500 years ago. Find a guide, tread gingerly--the ground is uneven--and avoid the hottest part of the day. Excavations began in 1967 and will press ahead for as long as funds filter in.

The government archeologist who began the dig and was killed in an accident there is buried nearby, but he rests alone.

“The only bones we have found are those of a pig,” our guide says. “Nothing human. The inhabitants must have had warning of the eruption and left.” What became of them is unknown. Scientists do know that the tsunamis from Santorini swamped Crete, about 70 miles away, spelling the end to the Minoan civilization on that island.

The multistoried, fresco-decorated houses uncovered at Akrotiri are amazing. The National Archeological Museum in Athens has swept off the pick of the frescoes, pottery and stone jars, but there’s enough left to impress.

Our reveries about standing in the ruins of Atlantis are overtaken in pursuit of another island experience: sun-worshiping.

One or two beaches are nude, access to others is steep and stony, and the best become crowded early. The most popular is Kamari, a five-mile stretch of black sand on Santorini’s southeast. Having negotiated Kamari’s pebbles in our beach booties, Victoria and I enter Poseidon’s tepid realm and strike out with our graceful, Olympics-style strokes, hoping that people are watching.

Soon we are hungry. Up the beach and across the road is a taverna--a whole row of them, along with fancier restaurants, bars, shops, hotels--where we are served wine, glorious grilled vegetables and a copious platter of lightly fried fish, which may be sardines, or not; neither the server’s English nor our Greek is about to resolve the matter. They are fishy, crunchy and wholly ingested-- head, tail, fins, bones, the lot. Then it’s back into the sensuous briny, whatever the health police’s opinion on swimming immediately after lunch may be.

We would be wary of recommending Santorini to those for whom paradise is to lie supine all day on golden sand. On volcanic Santorini the sand is black and coarse, and it seals in heat, giving the supine the sensation of being broiled and baked simultaneously.

Before we leave, I steal a spoonful of Santorini sand for the literature class I teach five minutes from the soft, blond beaches of Long Island’s Hamptons. In the fall we will read the “Odyssey.” Noble, much-enduring Odysseus, persecuted by Poseidon, is time and again washed ashore onto beaches that I had supposed to be soft and saffron. This grainy black stuff will be a revelation. Who says there are no souvenirs of Atlantis?

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GUIDEBOOK

Santorini Party

Getting there: Connecting flights from LAX to Athens, with at least one plane change, are available on Delta, British Airways, KLM and Lufthansa. Round-trip fares begin at $1,009.

Olympic Airways flies frequent nonstops daily from Athens to Santorini for $120 round trip. There are several ferries daily from Athens’ port of Piraeus, a nine-hour trip.

Where to stay: Our group was comfortably lodged at these hotels in Thira, all with private baths and in-room refrigerators:

Hotel Kavalari; telephone 011-30-286-22347 or 286-22455, fax 011-30-286-22603, e-mail kavalhtl@otenet.gr. Air-conditioned doubles with breakfast in high season (July-September), $113.

Hotel Galini; tel. 011- 30-286-22095 or 286-23881; fax 011-30-286-23097, e-mail galini-htl@otenet.gr. Doubles in high season, $78.

King Thiras Hotel; tel. 011-30-286-23882 or 286-23883; fax 011-30-286- 22155. Doubles with breakfast in high season, $89. All rooms have a balcony.

For more information: Greek National Tourist Organization, 645 Fifth Ave., 5th Floor, New York, NY 10022; tel. (212) 421-5777, fax (212) 826-6940.