Day 8: The Challenging & The Great

Our days are so fat and so busy that I have barely time to slow down and capture all that is happening. One thing consuming much of our time right now is trying to figure out where to go next. We've finished our first glorious leg, from Sorrento to Reggio Calabria, and the clarity of every day moving south felt amazing. But now, figuring where next in Italy to start another leg feels like standing in front of a huge beautiful buffet with only a tiny dessert plate. I am so ready to retire and just be able to travel for longer than a few short weeks at a time. 

But Day 8: our ride from Vibo Valencia to Scilla, 60 miles and 4000 feet of climbing. We got a frustratingly late start, due to me locking my good sunglasses behind us in the room. But as it goes with travel, one unfortunate thing can open the door to a fortunate thing. As we waited on the sidewalk for the cleaning lady to arrive to unlock for us, an old gentleman, drivers cap and beige coat, passed us, looked at my egregiously colorful biking leggings and then looked up at us. I couldn't understand what he said in Italian but I could understand it anyway, "ah! I was so distracted by these pantaloni I didn't even see you!"  

And then we had a beautiful conversation, meaning we were connecting across a void of language, understanding a sliver of what he was saying but gathering so much regardless. In our childlike Italian, we told him we were on our honeymoon, and he responded how he has been married 35 years (fingers are good for numbers) and isn't it great to have someone to share life with? He asked where we were going. The town on the ocean, Scilla. We then received an animated retelling of some important tale involving fish with long noses?, and spears?, all demonstrated with arms and hands. Oh, it was so wonderful to watch him talk to us, his thumb braced against his fingers and waggled aloft under our noses. This is the Adds Emphasis Motion I've learned. 

We all said ciao many times over as we parted, and biked away smiling and relishing those moments. 

Matthew had chosen a road winding through hill-towns with sweeping views over olive groves, the sort that's a squiggle doodle on the map. Banking around these turns in quiet peace was the bike tour paradise. The only cars that we encountered were tiny and passed us sleepily. It's times like these that balance out the head-down-push around pot-holes on straight flat roads where drivers go too fast and there's nothing to look at but roadside garbage. 

We descended through the town of Nicoterra, the streets so steep one could imagine somersaulting over the handlebars, as if you were floating above the bike, not atop it. Down, down, down. The road continuing to unroll beneath us. Incredible how a town can be built on such a slope! "Enough already," I was thinking. This was not the fun type of descent that involved swooping. This involved cramping hands.

Then we were in a flat bowl of land and we surprisingly felt the first unsavory vibes of the whole trip. Agriculture stretched for flat miles, big processing plants were behind long gates, the roads got straight and the cars got faster, and for the first time we encountered some growling and fierce dogs. Ripped grocery bags of trash were barfed along stretches of the road and big trucks passed us. I couldn't tell what was going on here, but my sense was the dark side of large-scale agricultural production. We passed what we could only assume was an African migrant worker, him on a creaky bike with a frail backpack, looking exhausted. The migrant conditions in Italy are appalling from what I read, and here we are happily eating clementines, not stopping to think who is picking them. 

Once the road climbed out of the bowl, the houses once again got tidier, the trash diminished, and the cars melted away. We were climbing a 1,500 ft climb up up up through old olive groves. There were abandoned structures amongst the trees, not tattered wood frames like you see in the states, but stone and brick...who knows how old those are. 

This was the sort of ride I needed to break into 10 mile chapters. You can't think too far ahead when half-way felt endless. Can I bike 5 more miles right now? Yes, I can do that at least. And you just repeat that until you're done. 

Around 3pm, the heat of the day, most of my regular existence had melted away and I was a churning machine of hill-climbing legs, heat rash poking up on my quads. Matthew, as usual was undaunted, but was happy to oblige accompanying me into the a bar for a break in a sleepy town that was mystifyingly still open. Something open during siesta?! La! 

I had a macchiato and a cornetto, and somehow they were disproportionately better than any I'd had in days. This is the power of Need, the strongest flavor enhancer. Three loud men were drinking Negronis there and the whole bar was filled with the sounds of Friday afternoon humans.

I pedaled away feeling quite renewed indeed. How convenient that the stereotypical cyclist-fuel of croissants and caffeine is ever-present in this country. And half the price of what you'd pay in the states. 

We ended our day in the impossibly beautiful city of Scilla, an ancient castle perched above the ocean, stairways leading from the hilltop center to the beach, streetlights marking the stone walls glowing into the night. 

So appealing in fact that we were among tourists again, English was spoken, prices increased, and we felt we'd lost a bit of the authentic Italy. The available restaurants were so pricy and all we wanted was a mom-n-pop spot with too much checkered red, a menu printed from the little copier business in town. 

But so is the experience of travel. We are LEARNING as we go what we want to seek, what we want to avoid. And there is so much that we've experienced to seek more of: our time has been incredible, delightful, like the country is giving us a gift. I cannot express how much we have been enjoying our trip.