That was Italy

This is our fourth and last day on the Sorrento Peninsular. We and the dogs are recovering from a wonderful but exhausting day yesterday. We went to Capri for lunch! I kid you not! Sally, Paul and co took a boat from Positano and we went by car, train, ferry, and taxis (interspersed with lots of walking) and we all met on the island in the harbour. After a crammed in ride on the funicular railway, Emily (Gareth’s niece) Googled us all to a shady beach side restaurant where the Med shimmered and stroked the rocky shore. It was a short but sweet trip, constrained as we were by the ferry crossing times, but enough to give us a glimpse of a Mediterranean idyll and to have some precious time with Gareth’s sister and family.

Today I am reflecting on the phenomenon of tourist travel. It’s the ants that have invaded our camper this morning that have made me realise how like them we are. So much of our excursion yesterday could possibly be seen from a distant perspective like ants processing into every nook and cranny of this amazing part of the world. There are the initial scouts who find a place that can be exploited in some way and soon we are all over it. We build, and build until we have changed the environment completely and made it our own. Positano, where Sally and Paul have rented a villa, is spectacular in its verticality. The Amalfi coast, right around this peninsular, is sheer cliff as if the ground has lifted up from the Earth. Houses literally hang off the cliffs and the roads are like spaghetti twisting and winding around and through the rock. You have to be something of a mountain goat to get around here as most of the walking is down, down, down, and further down or up, up, and up long twisting stepped alley ways. Pity anyone needing mobility aids who thought this a good holiday destination!

Being an area where the volcanic soil is rich for exploitation, there are fruit orchards everywhere.  Its climate and its beauty, natural and man-made, inevitably draws the tourists. Cruise ships pull in wherever there’s a crazy harbour and people disembark to pour into the shops, bars and restaurants. Motorbikers take on the challenge of a drive along the Amalfi coast road. Sun-seekers fly in and take up residence in the cool hotels and holiday villas, and fill the tiny stretches of beach that are ‘accessible’. Locals, apparently immune to risk weave around on their mopeds or pile into the local buses though a bus ride is definitely not for the faint-hearted; if you can get on one that is. 

We were told that travelling around Italy on public transport with dogs is easy. It turned out not be so. It seems to be very much at the discretion of the drivers or ticket staff whether to accept dogs; with muzzles or at all. We have had to resort to taxis most of the time and they’re expensive, working out at 8 Euro per kilometre! They are scary as hell, too! The driver who took us to Positano on Sunday drove at speed around the hairpins hanging off the cliff, overtaking blindly and sending messages on his mobile phone at the same time! We were trying to take in the unbelievable scenery while being flung from one side of the car to the other, just as the dogs were, poor things. Fortunately, the condition of the road is very good. Had it been as bad as those we came here on, we would have been in plaster casts by now! 

So now we are preparing to make our way north again and into easier territory. A motorhome, dogs and a dicky hip are not suited to this environment. We can chalk it up to experience and include it as a significant episode in our ‘adventure’. I hope I can retain the amazing images I have of the place because it’s impossible to do it justice with photographs.