October 23, 2015

 

 

High on Amalfi

Hello sun.  We’ve missed you.  It’s chilly and breezy this morning with quite a few clouds still around, but there it is.  Today is supposed to continue like this and tomorrow is predicted to be perfect.  About time.

Today is a repeat of breakfast from yesterday with Lydia popping in and out.  It looks like she also has some front desk duty today.  There are about 6 tables filled today, all couples, and it seems we are the only English speakers.  It sounds like mostly Italian with some German mixed in.  We have seen a lot of Germans in Croatia and here—these are their sea coast getaway spots and we have been told that they do like to travel this time of year.

We have discussed hopping on one of the buses or boats to see some more of the peninsula but quite frankly it will be the same.  We have had the island of Capri recommended as a don’t-miss spot, while others have said it takes tourist trap to a new level.  All things considered we choose to stay nearby and go inland which means go up.  We start at the official tourist office down at the harbor for hiking maps.  Vincenzo has given us some of his preferred walks, but he is in his 30’s and we’re not.  We don’t need 6-miles of hills and boulders.  Our mission is Pontone (Pon-TONE-ay), the little village that we see above us when we look up.  The lady at the TI also suggest a companion walk a little farther up along the river to a waterfall at the top and then circle back to Pontone, and finally to Atrani before returning to Amalfi.  She says two hours of steady walking, more with breaks.  Perfect.  What could go wrong?

Nothing so far.  We find the right trail right away with signs pointing the way.  Mary also finds little orange paint dots on the rocks in lieu of bread crumbs.  We start past lemon orchards on the top edge of town.  There are olives and some grapes, but this is lemon country.  The stores are filled with lemon candy, lemon pastries and lemon booze.  The lemon tenders are covering these trees with tarps as we go by.  We’ll have to look it up.

We’re following the river and the path is really very civilized, mostly carved stone walkways and steps up.  This is our version of the Thigh-Master.  It gets a little more rustic as we get into the woods above the groves but still wide dirt paths with little orange dots as we go.  There are the skeletons of old paper mills along this road as well as an ancient aqueduct.  We surmise that they needed the water from the river for their operations and built the mills along the downward path of the river.  The shells of buildings covered with plant growth is sort of like an Indiana Jones movie.

One little blip is the stream we have to cross by stepping on a couple rocks, but not bad.  The waterfall is not Niagara but it is a nice little reward for our first hour on the trail.  We’ve gone about 2 miles in an hour, all of it straight uphill so a reasonable pace. 

We find the trail to Pontone right away.  We continue up as we have to cross a ridge to get out of the valley we’re in and on to the other side.  There are some olive trees up here in the middle of nowhere and there is actually a person tending some of them.  A lot of questions are raised.  We’re now into up and down mode and the dirt path is showing signs of civilization as we get closer to Pontone.  The views down into the valley with Amalfi and the sea beyond are spectacular.  Wow!

Pontone is sleepy when we arrive.  Mary finds a “rustic” rest room and we pass on the opportunity for a break.  Now we’re about 1:45 into our walk and feeling pretty sassy.  We see the sign for Atrani and Amalfi to begin our descent.  This is probably a good place for things to start to go wrong.

Somewhere we miss a sign.  We turn left when we should have gone straight.  Bad mistake.  We’re still going down which we consider to be a good sign.  Our surroundings are getting rougher as we progress and we’re a little surprised because this is supposed to be a popular trail between Amalfi and Pontone.  Now we’re going down broken stone steps that are crumbling beneath us and for a while we are protected from sheer drop-offs by a user friendly barbed wire fence.  We can’t tell which way we’re going because we’re in deep woods and going back and forth on switchbacks.

Let’s get to the end.  Eventually we cross a river and go back up hill to a road that goes generally in the right direction and we come into Atrani from the opposite direction than we had intended.  It’s time for a beer break because we’re back in civilization.  Another half hour hike and we’re back to Residenza Luce with burning thighs and painful knees.  We wound up going 6+ miles in four hours over rough terrain, much of which was steeply uphill.  That’s compared to the 6 mile downhill hike Vincenzo recommended that we disregarded as being too hard.  Live and learn but it was another memorable adventure.

We’re pushing our luck and going back to L’Abside tonight for dinner.  Giovanna finds us a table inside next to the kitchen where John can watch the action.  We start with a tuna caponata and a bottle of red.  Mary has the lemon risotto with shrimp and John goes red tonight with a tagliatelle tossed with a tomato-meat sauce.  Everything is very good, very authentic and prepared with care.  It just doesn’t knock our socks off like the last two nights.  That’s what we get for going back once too often, but we console ourselves that it was still better than any other place we could have tried.

Ibuprofin is our night cap tonight.  We know we’ll be in pain tomorrow.

What did we learn today?  Pay attention, the devil is always in the details.