I spent weeks before this trip convincing myself not to hire a car in Santorini.
I drive on the left. My partner drives on the left. Neither of us is what you’d call a confident driver, and every blog post I read before going seemed to feature winding cliff roads, furious local drivers overtaking on blind corners, and some vague sense that hiring a car was something only braver people did. So I didn’t. The plan was buses.
The plan lasted about four hours.
We got the ferry in, arrived mid-afternoon, and wanted to make it to Oia for sunset. We stood at the bus stop near where we were staying. We waited. Other people waited with us. Nothing came. Eventually the whole little crowd of us gave up and went home, sunset unwatched.
That was the moment I changed my mind.
Why the bus didn’t work
Santorini does have a bus system, and it does go to the places you want to go. The problem is frequency, especially once you’re past peak summer. We were there at the end of October, shoulder season, and the gaps between buses stretched out to the point where you could lose half a day waiting for one that might not show. With only two nights on the island, that math didn’t work. I had a list: Oia for sunset, Akrotiri, Red Beach, Perissa. The buses technically went to all of them. Realistically, I was going to see about half.
Taxis weren’t the backup plan I assumed they’d be either. Santorini runs on something like 40 taxis for the entire island, which sounds like a typo until you’re standing at a rank watching nothing arrive. Worth knowing before you rely on them as your plan B.
So we hired a car. Same evening.
I called the hotel, asked if they could help, and within what felt like minutes they’d organised it. A little Fiat 500 convertible got delivered straight to where we were staying. We’d specifically asked for automatic, since neither of us wanted gear changes added to the list of things to think about on the wrong side of the road.
It was, hands down, the best decision of the trip.
What driving there is actually like
Here’s what nobody mentions in the “terrifying roads” posts: the speed limit across the island is 50 km/h. Nobody is going fast. Santorini is essentially one ring road with a few spurs off it, which means there isn’t much chance to get properly lost. Fira got a bit hectic with one-way sections, but the traffic there is so constant and slow that it gives you time to actually think about what you’re doing rather than panic.
We used our UK licences. No international permit, no issue, no one even asked.
What it actually cost
Less than €50 a day, and that’s an upper estimate. (Shoulder season pricing for a small car typically runs €18 to 30 a day, so I likely paid toward the lower end of that.) For context, the minibus transfer we’d booked from the ferry port to our hotel cost around €20 to 25 per person. Add that up for two people and you’re most of the way to a day’s car hire already, before you’ve gone anywhere.
Fuel was simple. Dropping it off at the airport at the end was simple. No arranging a taxi or transfer for departure day, we just drove there ourselves and walked to the gate.
What having a car actually opened up
Akrotiri. Red Beach. Perissa. The lighthouse for sunset. All of it became possible in two days, which would have been completely out of reach on the bus timetable we’d seen. If I went back, I’d actually base myself somewhere quieter and more remote than the main hubs, since a car means you’re not tied to walking distance from the action. There are some lovely little holiday homes tucked away from the tourist centres that only make sense once you’ve got your own transport.
I also saw plenty of people on ATVs, which online discourse treats as borderline reckless. From what I actually saw on the roads, it looked entirely manageable, just not what we’d booked.
The verdict
If you’re nervous about it, you’re allowed to be nervous about it. I was. But don’t let that nervousness make the decision for you before you’ve even arrived. Get there, see the roads for yourself, and decide once you know what you’re actually dealing with rather than what a forum thread told you to expect. For us, the alternative wasn’t “slightly less convenient.” It was missing the things we’d specifically gone there for.
Hire the car. Worst case, you’ve spent less than the cost of one taxi ride finding out it wasn’t necessary.
Want the full picture of where to actually go once you’ve got wheels? My guide to Vegan in Santorini: What I Actually Found covers where we ate along the way, and Vegan in Athens: The Honest Guide picks up before this leg of the trip.
