Basilicata

Tuesday October 21, 2008

Today might be considered a down day especially after the excitement of yesterday. The region we are in, Basilicata, is not one of the tourist areas of Italy other than for Italians spending time at the beaches. So we were looking for something to do possibly for the first time on the trip. We settled on visiting Castelmezzano, described as “one of the 37 prettiest towns in Italy.” Who knew there was a “prettiest 37 towns” contest?!? Our guidebook did not say what number this town is, but let’s guess!

Getting there was half the fun. We are on the coast and our objective is in the middle of the boot. That means crossing two or three lines of mountains and climbing at least 1000 meters each time. Our GPS seems to believe that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line or something like a straight line meaning straight over the mountain rather than around it. It sent us on a few wonderful roads, some of which might be considered poorly paved cow paths; in fact, we did share the road with some cows, no fences or cowherds in sight. So the trip was quite interesting and also beautiful. Unlike my preconceptions, the mountains are covered with trees and we were treated to fall colors, though not up to New England standards. But then again, it’s still warm here.

Castelmezzano is a nice little town (I will vote for it as #26), perched on the side of a rock outcrop, which makes it quite distinctive. We walked through the entire town, or should I say climbed through it, to the “fortress” on the other end of town. All that remains of this is a low wall but I can’t imagine anyone climbing up and taking the fortress. The views of the surrounding peaks, the town below, and the valley below that were beautiful.

One thing we found there that will bring Mary Ellen back soon is what is called “Flight of the Angels”. They have strung a cable between two of the rock outcrops about 1 KM apart and you “fly” from one hilltop town to another across a deep ravine face down in a kind of sling attached to the cable. They actually have strung cables for the same span in another section of and we guessed that was so they could say that if one broke, they had another you could use; no excuses accepted! Unfortunately, the ride was closed for the season, but Mel will surely return when it re-opens. (See the photo of the descriptive sign.)

We went from there to Pietrapertosa, a similarly situated village and the other end of the Angel flight. We only stayed a while in this town since we were all climbed out from Castelmezzano, but we did have a lovely chat in our excellent Itaglish with three nonne (grandmothers) caring for a darling two-year old boy on the steps of the local church.

From there we took the non-straight line route back to our apartment, which turned out to be longer but quicker.

Tomorrow we travel to the tip of the boot to cross the Strait of Messina by ferry to our destination in Sicily, Cefalu. There, we will rendezvous with Mel’s sister Janie and their cousin Brian Lenney, his wife and daughter, who live outside London.

Ciao!
Tom (with improvements by Mel as usual)