If you’ve ever dreamed of watching the sunset from the cliffs of Oia, Santorini, let me set the scene for you: imagine a postcard-perfect village of whitewashed houses and blue domes, the Aegean glowing molten gold, the air warm and fig-sweet… and you, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with nine hundred of your closest strangers, all armed with tripods, drones, ring lights, and relationships on the brink.
This is not a sunset.
This is an Olympic sport.
I arrived on the island with the idealistic vision many Australians have—a serene escape, a moment of awe, maybe a gyros or three. It didn’t help that Lonely Planet calls the Oia sunset “one of the most iconic travel experiences in the world,” which is precisely the kind of glowing endorsement that ruins everything. By the time I climbed the marble steps, the crowd density was approaching Boxing Day sales at Westfield.
But the mob wasn’t my problem.
My problem was them—the Influencer Couple.
I met them—well, encountered them—on my first recon mission for a good viewing spot. I’d scouted travel blogs, including a stern warning from National Geographic that Santorini’s peak-hour sunsets are “a lesson in managing expectations” (translation: abandon hope, all ye who enter at dusk). But as a proud Aussie determined to wrestle serenity from chaos, I pushed on.
And there they were.
She wore a flowing red dress that seemed to billow on command. He wore a shirt unbuttoned just enough to annoy you. They were perched—illegally, I might add—on a precarious white dome with the confidence of people who hadn’t read any of UNESCO’s guidelines about respecting cultural sites. The dome probably hadn’t been designed to support that much self-love.
“Babe, angle your chin,” she commanded.
“No, your chin,” he countered.
Several chins were raised. None seemed correct.
I tucked myself into what I believed to be a quiet laneway, only to be blasted by a rogue drone zipping past my ear like a technologically advanced magpie. The couple gasped, horrified—not because they nearly decapitated me, but because the drone’s shadow fell across their shot at the wrong moment.
And so the rivalry began.
Round One: Position Warfare
Sunset in Santorini is a slow, seductive thing. The sun doesn’t just set—it performs. But the crowd performs harder.
I tried to secure a vantage point early, as recommended by the Hellenic Ministry of Tourism (well, they suggest avoiding peak times, but apparently I enjoy ignoring expert advice). I staked my claim on a low wall. Nothing fancy. Just enough height to feel superior.
Five minutes later, the Influencer Couple appeared like the final bosses in a video game.
“Oh! This spot is perfect,” she squealed.
“It certainly is,” I said, spreading myself out so widely I resembled a human starfish.
But they were skilled operators. Trained. Conditioned. Possibly former NRL players with the way they sidestepped into my personal space. They began a slow, insidious creep—one inch at a time—until I found myself politely moving aside in that aggressively passive Australian way. Soon I was clinging to a drainpipe like a possum in danger.
Every time I blocked their shot—even accidentally—they sighed loudly enough to disturb the caldera.
I retaliated by “accidentally” photobombing with my water bottle shaped like a kangaroo (don’t judge me; it was a gift).
The rivalry escalated quickly.
Round Two: Environmental Hazards
By midpoint, the scene had devolved into what The Guardian’s travel section once called “a sunset pilgrimage that borders on gladiatorial theatre.” They were not exaggerating.
A German tourist with a selfie stick the length of a fishing rod was jousting for territory. A British backpacker had climbed a chimney that most likely was not load-bearing. A toddler, whose parents had momentarily lost control, was toddling into every frame on the entire cliffside, achieving accidental stardom.
But the Influencer Couple? They remained laser-focused.
“Babe, we need to get the exact composition,” he said, referencing a screenshot from the Condé Nast Traveler Instagram, as though recapturing it would summon the ancient powers of the island.
“I need the wind to hit my dress differently,” she said, glaring at the breeze itself.
“That’s not how wind works,” I muttered, earning a side-eye fierce enough to crumble masonry.
The crowd leaned. Tripods scraped. Backpacks collided. Someone stepped on my foot, apologised, then did it again for balance.
I took a deep breath, wondering—Wasn’t this meant to be spiritual? Transcendent? A moment to reconnect with the universe? But all I could reconnect with was the sweaty shoulder of a man named Lars.
Just as I considered abandoning the whole thing and retreating for baklava, disaster struck.
The Influencer Couple lost their dome.
A local shouted something about “no climbing!” and the pair, startled, wobbled down like glamorous mountain goats losing their footing. Their perfect shot—ruined. Their confidence—shaken. Their relationship—possibly on thin ice.
I should have cheered.
Instead, I watched them deflate, and something unexpected stirred inside me.
Sympathy.
We were all chasing the same thing: a fleeting slice of beauty. Surely we could coexist? Surely we could—dare I say it—work together?
Against all Australian instincts toward quiet independence, I approached.
The Alliance
“Hey,” I said, awkward as a schoolkid asking someone to the formal. “I know a spot.”
They blinked. The dress billowed. The shirt fluttered.
“Where?” she asked suspiciously.
I pointed. A terrace just below the general chaos—a little-known ledge I’d spotted earlier but dismissed because getting there required squeezing through a doorway sized for hobbits.
“We won’t fit,” the boyfriend said.
“You will if you believe in yourselves,” I replied, because by now this felt like a motivational seminar.
Together we navigated the tiny passage. She removed her dress train. He folded his tripod like a Transformer. I sucked in my stomach. Miraculously, we emerged on the other side into a pocket of serenity—a small, quiet nook overlooking the caldera with just enough room for three humans and a misguided drone.
Their faces lit up.
“Oh my god… this is perfect,” she whispered, as though speaking too loudly would alert the hordes.
They arranged themselves. He framed the shot. She posed with the precision of a ballet dancer summoned for a Vogue cover.
And me?
I sat back, finally—finally—with an unobstructed view of the molten orange sun melting into the Aegean like a dropped mango gelato.
For a brief moment, everything was still.
No elbows. No drones. No tripod sabotage.
Just the three of us basking in the glow of achievement.
“Would you… take one for us?” the boyfriend asked sheepishly, holding out his phone.
And reader, I did.
I captured what may very well be their most sincere, least contrived moment—two people glowing in the sunset, grateful, peaceful, strangely human.
Then they returned the favour, snapping a shot of me that I later examined and thought: Wow, I really should’ve adjusted my chin.
Epilogue: The Sunset Treaty of Santorini
As we squeezed back through the hobbit doorway and re-entered the chaos, the Influencer Couple paused.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Yeah,” he added. “If you ever need help getting a good angle…”
I grinned. “Mate, I’m Australian. All my angles are bad but we make do.”
We parted ways—not friends, exactly, but veterans of a sunset war who had survived the battlefield together. A strange respect had formed, mixed with mild trauma.
And as I wandered off for a well-earned Mythos beer, I realised something a travel writer from The New York Times once observed about Santorini: that its beauty is both its blessing and its curse. Everyone wants a piece of it, but no one gets the whole thing to themselves.
Still, if you’re lucky—and willing to crawl through a stone doorway clearly not designed for modern hips—you might just find your quiet moment after all.
And maybe, just maybe, share it with people you never planned to like.