Cable car of Santorini

This guide to the Cable car of Santorini follows what happens when the meltemi wind shuts the lift down without warning, leaving riders with two options: 588 zigzagging stone steps or a mule. It traces the story back to before 1982, when the Old Port sat 220 meters below with no way up but on foot or animal, and to shipowner Evangelos Nomikos and his wife Loula, who funded Austrian engineers to string a wire up the cliff. The mule drivers never disappeared from the switchbacks below, and still take a cut of every ticket sold on the wire above them.