Santorini has a public face that most visitors see, and a private face that most visitors miss. The public face is Oia at sunset, the cable car queue in Fira, the inflatable flamingo photos on the infinity pool. It’s beautiful, and it’s crowded, and it’s essentially the same experience for everyone.
The private face requires wheels.
If I were arriving in Santorini tomorrow with a free week and an ATV from Iakovos Rentals, these are the places I’d head that don’t appear in the standard itinerary.
Faros — The Lighthouse at the End of the Island
Most visitors to Akrotiri stop at the archaeological site, maybe walk down to the red beach, and turn around. The road continues. Follow it past the beach access track and it eventually reaches the Akrotiri lighthouse — Faros — at the very southwestern tip of Santorini, where the caldera opens to the sea and there is essentially nothing between you and the horizon.
It’s not a secret exactly, but it’s far enough past the obvious stopping point that most tour groups never get there. On an ATV, the access road at the end is manageable. In a car, you’d want to check conditions before committing.
The view from Faros in the late afternoon, with the sun dropping toward the caldera rim, is as good as anything Oia offers — with nobody standing between you and it.
Exo Gonia and the Back Road Vineyards
Between Pyrgos and Kamari, there’s a network of back roads through the island’s vineyard interior that most visitors drive past without noticing. Exo Gonia is a small village that sits in this zone — quiet, traditional, with a 17th-century church and a collection of tavernas that serve local food to local people rather than tourist menus to tour groups.
The roads here pass through the basket-trained vines that make Santorini’s viticulture unique — the vines are wound into low circular baskets close to the ground, protecting the grapes from the wind and concentrating the heat. It looks like nothing else in the wine world, and it’s everywhere once you get off the main road.
Vlychada Beach
On the south coast, east of Akrotiri, Vlychada beach sits below a cliff of eroded volcanic ash that has been carved by wind and weather into formations that look almost architectural — white, abstract, deeply strange. The beach itself is black sand and considerably less crowded than Perissa or Perivolos, partly because it’s slightly harder to get to and partly because it doesn’t have the same concentration of beach clubs.
The pumice cliff walk at the eastern end of the beach is worth doing on foot once you’ve parked. It takes about twenty minutes and the formations get progressively more dramatic as you go.
Pyrgos — The Highest Village
Pyrgos sits at the highest point of the island and was the capital of Santorini during the Venetian period. Unlike Oia and Fira, which have been substantially rebuilt for tourism after the 1956 earthquake, Pyrgos retains a more authentic character — tighter streets, fewer tourist shops, a Byzantine castle at the top with a 360-degree view of the entire island.
From Pyrgos on a clear day you can see all the way to the neighboring islands of Thirasia and, on exceptional days, Ios. The village has a small number of excellent tavernas and kafeneions that cater primarily to locals, and the atmosphere in the late afternoon — when the tour groups have moved on to Oia for sunset — is exactly what people imagine when they think about Greek island life.
Getting to Pyrgos is straightforward from any direction. Getting into the upper part of the village, near the castle, requires either a scooter or a willingness to walk up from the lower parking area. The Smart For Two will just about manage it if you’re committed.
Mesa Pigadia
Between Kamari and Pyrgos, a road leads inland toward a cluster of old winery buildings and agricultural structures that most maps don’t label. Mesa Pigadia is not a destination in the conventional sense — there’s nothing there to visit in the tourist sense of the word. But the landscape around it, with the volcanic rock formations, the old stone walls, and the absence of anyone else, is the closest you’ll get on Santorini to the island as it was before the tourism industry arrived.
It’s the kind of place you stop at because you turned off the main road on impulse, and then you sit there for half an hour not quite sure why you don’t want to leave.
An ATV from Iakovos Rentals — the Kymco MXU 450i or the Linhay 550cc — handles the access roads in this part of the island without any concern. A standard rental car from the airport would make the driver nervous. A scooter would manage but wouldn’t feel as planted.
The island rewards the curious. The curious need wheels.