I was up late Thurday night writing this bullshit and awoke at 7:30 with minimal sleep to get Cholo ready for another run at his passport application, this time in Briatico. Briatico sits on the sea and the village of Sciconi was and is a part of this municipality.
Torre La Rocchetta, a 16th century Saracen tower on the beach of Briatico.
Once again Cholo is rejected and this one stings as the bureaucrat he deals with quickly dismisses him and leaves to go have a coffee with his girlfriend. La puta que te pareo, hijo de puta! etc. After a quick stop at Briaticos port/beach I take Cholo to the picture postcard town of Tropea, the "capital" of the region and namesake of Calabrias most famous onion. The views are beautiful but the beaches and streets are unpleasantly crowded.
Santa Maria dell’Isola, on the Isola Bella, Tropea.
It's high season and I congratulate myself for not sleeping in this congested and just-a-bit-too-touristy city. Cholo manages to embarrass me by doffing his shirt and strutting around the main piazza in blue pants with his underwear waistband hanging out, ostrich shoes and hairy man boobs on display. He sits at a cafe to have a beer and I try to explain that it's good manners to wear a shirt but he laughs me off and enjoys his beer while I refuse to join him. I guess I'm lucky he didn't strip down to just his underwear. His informality and, dare I say, lack of manners can be charming at times but infuriating at others.
Cholo enjoys a Moretti.
Honk
Saturday gets off to an unpleasant start when we awake to blaring horns at some ungodly hour. Is it 2 or 3? Someone is blocking the road, honestly it's little more than a mountain pass in a dense medieval village, right in front of our apartment. A bus is involved somehow because you can't miss the extra-loud "hee haw, hee haw" honk it makes. This goes on for MINUTES. 20 seconds would be enough to fuck your sleep up but this debacle is accompanied by a littany of horns and shouting and maybe a scream. I was too delirious to say for sure. I get back to sleep but my REM phase was well interruped and I konk out 'til nine.
The view from our room, Pizzo.
Roadtrippin'
I've read over and over again how beautiful the Bronzi di Riace are. Rendered in the 6th century BC they were discovered underwater somewhere in the Messina strait and are currently undergoing restoration. I wish I knew that before I went to Reggio Calabria to see them because all I really saw was a great view of their asses. All two of them. A wikipedia tour, which I've already seen, woulda been just fine.
The drive to Reggio was cool, however. The autostrade flirts with the mountains and you see a different sort of terrain as you head west to Calabria's tippy-toe. The hills are scarred with brush fires and the smell of smoke is a constant. We approached the village of Scilla with Sicily in the distance and it truly was one of those vistas that seems almost too picture postcard perfect. And alliterative! I pull off the autostrade to get a view of the beach and Messina to find a vespa with General Lee paintjob.
Scilla beach, with Sicily in the background.
The General Lee.
From Reggo Calabria we turned to the south and the Ionian sea. You have to cross the Aspromonte mountains to get there. The Aspromonte are famous/infamous for being the site of various 'ndraghetta (mafia) acivities in the 70s and 80s including many kidnappings. I think they held a Getty there and cut off his ear. And to think VanGogh did it for shits and giggles. Ascending from the seas to 1000 meters there was a terrific transition in geology, climate and plant life. The lower hills were sparse and dry. On the way up at Cittanova were copious olive and citrus groves while the top of the Aspromonte was covered with pine, cork oak, eucalyptus and wild fig. I really shouldn't say the top of Aspromonte since the highest peak is almost 2K meters, but the 1000 meters we hit was plenty high and the great difference in temperature and scenery was astounding. On the descent approaching our destination of Gerace, we found a little table and bench by the side of the road and stopped to have a bite. The smell of pine and eucalyptus wafted in from a little grove of trees next to where we stopped as we dug in to a pecorino Cholo picked up from from a roadside stand 10 minutes previous. It was about as nice a lunch as I've ever enjoyed despite having to beg off offers of beer and wine from the cooler. The roads were the tightest and twistest we'd hit yet with rotten fences and embankments. Adrenaline driven driving for sure.
Lunch, Calabrian style.
The oldest city in the world
OK, Gerace might not be that old but it has to be in the running. A perfectly, and I mean perfectly, preserved medieval village on a stark hillside facing the Ionian sea it seems like an unappreciated or stealth historical trasure. They have found artifacts from the 5 millenia BC in this village and even more old stuff since then. As soon as you see a 18th century church you turn around and see one from the 14th century, and 13th, and then 10th.
Church of San Giovanelli, 10th Century, Gerace.
The Baroque style altar (1664) from St. Francis of Assisi Church, 13th century.
The tomb of Nicola Ruffo, St. Francis of Assisi chruch, Gerace.
Detail from the tomb.
And that's the young stuff. This city has spanned the prehistoric era thru the phoenicians and greeks, survived the Roman, Syracusan and Moorish conquests blah blah blah. At some point you just get tired of taking pictures of old things when everything is old. It's still a vibrant, active town and the inhabitants seem non-plussed by all the history that surrounds them while I gape. I see them out chatting or complaining or fighting. A band of guys in their teens and 20s hang out on a bench playing Calabrian songs on accordian and tambourine, not for dough but with their wives and kids. Gerace is dead; long live Gerace.
Music on the old ramparts.
Same guys on the street, Gerace.
It all has to end somewhere
We're running later than I expected, not that I've had a real schedule or itinerary. I really wanted to see the cathedral of Cattolica in the village of Stilo, 25 miles north of Gerace. I've seen pictures of it's unique Byzantine style roof circa 900 and want to see it with my own eyes. But it's getting late and I can see Cholo is waning, plus we've hit some sort of traffic jam near some seaside town along the way. Neapolitan assholes on a week-end shore run, no doubt. I pull off to the beach and decide it's time to give up. I'll never get to Stilo in time for there to be light and I know I won't see shit. Cholo takes a siesta on the wall by the beach while I change in to my suit and take a quick dip in the Ionian sea. The pebbly beach gives way to cool, glassy blue water and I feel extra floaty. I wonder if it's because the salinity is higher here but decide it's probably just because I'm especially fat at the moment. After 15 minutes I make my way back up the beach to dry off and Cholo is still passed out on the wall except now there's about a hundred flies or mosquitos or some other insect forming a swirling cloud above his feet. I know his daughters would laugh if they could see this.
Cholo, taking a siesta.
In this story our Hero can't find a goddamed parking space. After a shot of espresso we turn our backs to the Ionian sea and arrive in Pizzo shortly before 10PM. Cholo jokes the whole way back across the mountains and very generously doesn't act scared when I squeeze what I can out of the Lancia on the black and twisty roads. We find the town slammed with humanity. Pizzo is famous for gelato and the Piazza Nationale has no less than 10 places to get your ice cream on. Therefore it follows that every man, woman, child and nonna for kilometers around rushes to Pizzo centrale after dinner to meander and have a taste. That means that they've arrive by car and the normally liberal parking opportunities (by Calabrian standards anyway) have evaporated. Every parcheggio, and I've discovered them all by now, is license plate to license plate tight. After finding nothing open on my first pass I drop Cholo off at the apartment to save him a walk and set out on my own. *Aside: I've mentioned Cholo forgets everything. When I dropped him off he forgot his hat, one of his two cell phones, his camera bag and one of his two cameras, yet he remembered the 3 beers he left in the trunk. Priorities.
Pizzo, night approaching.
For the next hour I drive in circles. I'm stuck in traffic while big nosed girls and skinny guys with murses and popped collars line up in front of waterside discos. Spots I wouldn't have ever considered parking I noticed are full on a second pass. I'm outclassed. These folks know how to park like a motherfucker. Only down neck Newark comes close for the sheer audacity. I find one spot but move when I realized I'm blocking all but the skinniest Fiats. Finally, after more than an hour, I find a spot just one spot in front of where I've parked for the last 2 days. I approach the parking attendant to pay the fee and he waves me off telling me that spot is free. Ultimately I guess I got lucky, but I'm too tired, hungry, thirsty and smelly to appreciate it.
Pizzo, sunset.
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