We arrived in Bari by ferry
from Croatia .
As we were coming into port I was watching the Pilot as he
was getting ready to board the boat. One minute he was standing on his boat as
both moved along and the next he had made the jump to the ladder and was
climbing up the side. What a stressful job having to leap onto moving boats.
From Bari we were to head for
Naples . Just
getting out of Bari
was an experience. The drivers here drive as if it their last day and they want
to be in front of the queue when the time comes.
On the highway we pass a lot of olive groves in very stoney
ground with old stone huts and conical stone buildings dotting the grove and
the walls are of the dry stone type construction.
Oleander bushes full of flower in every shade of cream, pink
and red grow along the roads.
The farming country looks very dry, in fact it is almost
like driving around Geraldton except for the buildings.
Our first sightseeing stop was Pompei. We stayed in the camp
ground Camping Zeus about a 100 metres from the ruins. On our first morning we
decided to go early to see Mt Vesuvius.
MT VESUVIUS
This is the view from in Pompei. The mountain on the right
is the old Vesuvius crater which covered Pompei when it erupted. The crater on the
left is the New Vesuvius crater after the eruption of 1944.
First we got a bus which took us halfway up the mountain to
the Vesuvius National Park
where we paid our entrance fee which included
going up to 1050 metres in a Unimog.
Once up there we had a 680 metres walk or crawl up to the
crater.
It was all very exciting. The last time Vesuvius blew up was
in 1944. We learned about it in school, now we were really here on the crater.
On the way up we passed one of the seismic testing stations.
Once at the top we had an interesting talk by the rangers.
Her finger shows where we are standing.
The seismic equipment
is monitored 24 hrs a day and they say they will have several days warning to
evacuate people from the towns below.
The crater does not have any belching smoke from below.
After the 1944 explosion, Vesuvius is now a plugged volcano so the next time it
goes up it will be a big explosion like the one which destroyed Pompei.
It was a good feeling to get back down without feeling any
rumbles and a good feeling to strike it off my bucket list..
POMPEI RUINS
The entrances to Pompei are crowded with stalls selling
anything they can think of which could remotely be termed Pompei souvenir. There
are also stalls full of lemons to attract you to the bottles of Lemoncello for
sale.
The temperatures have been in the high 30’s and on our visit
to the Pompei ruins it was extremely hot. We weren’t on a tour so we could stop
in the shade when we wanted.
Booklets with maps are a big seller but we found out once we
entered and followed the crowds walking back and forth that the maps don’t
really coincide with any directions or numbers inside. The best way to find
your way is to ask fellow searchers what they have hunted down or follow anyone
who looks really confident that they know where they are going. There are lots
of guides offering their services official and unofficial but they rabbit on
looking at things you may not be interested in and not see much at all.
The area is huge and takes some hours of walking as it is
very spread out. There are lots of temples and villa ruins. Some things I have
seen in documentaries are not in Pompei anymore but in the Naples Museum
Dotted around in sheds are a lot of Amphora and
also plaster casts of bodies found in the ash.
Pompei was a very modern city in ideas as well
as buildings. Many of the books sold show the erotic side of Pompei from the
mosaics found. We are too young to look at the books but we did see this sign
which we hunted down after being told about it. The sign pointed the way to the
brothel area with very explicit art work.
The Roman Bath buildings still has features worth seeing. I
love the way they put statues bent over holding up the roof. We have seen this
now in many old buildings. St Catherines Palace in St Petersburg had magnificent ones also.
A lot of the site is dilapidated but it looks like funds are
now being spent as there are many sites where work is going on to preserve
them. This villa with a mosaic floor which looks like a carpet is now being
cleaned.
We searched for quite a while until us and about 10 other
avid searchers found where the family group of vineyard workers were. They were
workers who didn’t make it out and are on display in a huge cabinet among the
grapevines in the area of the original vineyard.
So hot and weary we made our way home to cross another thing
off of our bucket list.
We went to Sorrento , the
Lemoncello Capital of Italy
then caught a bus along the Amalfi
Coast
The bus travels along the edge of the cliff and
I thought it would be a good idea to sit on the sea side to get the good views.
Not a good decision when you find out the driver is a madman who likes living
on the edge. There are many blind corners and often the road is built out on
the edge with some reinforcement underneath.
The road is in the top third of this photo.
We arrived in Amalfi in time for lunch and a swim. The lemon
groves line the cliffs on terraces, the houses are all around the harbour.
We decided to take a boat back to Positano and pick the bus
up there to say some of the nail biting cliff edges.
The view when arriving in Positano by boat is fantastic.
The houses cling to whatever “flat” space could be found.
There are no cars in Positano, the houses take up all the space except for lots
of pathways and steps.
The beach has the usual rows of hire umbrellas and lounges.
This is the free beach where you have the opportunity to get
back to nature and lay on stones. There are many shops along the front and I
noticed that there must have been a big girls shop here.
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