“You want a tour of Vesuvius? Only 20 euro per adult and 10
euro for child, a minibus will pick you up here at 9:30am, it’s a 2 hour round
trip” The Wee Girl and I looked at each other, sounds good we thought.
So the next morning we trotted back and paid our cash. We didn’t have much left in the kitty and the
Wee Girl pointed out we might have to pay extra to get into the park (even
though this was not mentioned when they sold us the tickets). We got back to the meeting point at 9:30am
sharp… Half an hour later a battered taxi wheezed to a halt in front of us with
enough seating for 7 people… really? A taxi? In we all piled and the Wee Girl
whispered to me “there’s no seatbelts” sure enough we were living life on the
edge.
The Englishman in front went to
put on his belt and the taxi driver waved him into seatbeltless
submission. So off we sped through the
dirty streets of Modern Pompei. That in
itself is an adventure, the driving is so much more exciting than up north (and
that’s saying something). The driver had
an interesting driving technique, one elbow perched out the window, hand
hanging down and the other hand on the wheel.
With regularity his phone would ring with a jaunty tune, at this event his
hand would come off the wheel to pick up the phone. Eventually he would grab the wheel with the
hand that had been hanging out the window and he would proceed to have a loud
conversation in the local lingo with whoever called. This happened every 5 minutes or so much to
the horror of the passengers.
Past vacant blocks filled with rubbish and balconies
decorated with Astroturf (that’s Astroturf around the outside of the rails,
sometimes with jaunty patterns woven into it) we thought it definitely added a
touch of class to the moldy plasterwork… and onto the autostrada briefly and
off again to start weaving our way up the mountain. There are so many derelict buildings near Napoli,
covered in graffiti, windows smashed and old curtains hanging forlornly in the
background.
Part way up the taxi driver pulled over and pointed toward
the view across the mountains and grunted “Napoli” and indicated we should all
take some photos which we duly did. Then
back into the taxi to wheeze our way up the mountain. After a few hair-raising turns (with cars
squeezing past in the opposite direction) we reached the car park. He pointed to the ticket booth. Sure enough an extra 30 euro was required to
get into the park. As suspected one of
the other couples had not reckoned on this and started arguing with the taxi
driver (who was in no way affiliated with the Dodgy Brothers Tourism Group) He
was clearly used to this though, and pointed out the microscopic script in
Italian and English on the flyer saying the fee did not cover entry to the
mountain. “Española” she yelled at him,
he shrugged and gave her the stink-eye. Defeated
she went to pay their entry fee.
Of the walk up and down Vesuvius what can I say? Of course
it was awesome, luckily the Wee Girl and I had plenty of training on the
streets of Assisi and Todi so we were hardened to uphill slogs (though the lava
scree on the path made for slippery going).
Past several tacky tourist huts full of lava carvings and overpriced bits
of rock in boxes and onto the lip of the crater. A lot of photos later we decided to head back
down. We past 2 other couples also on
our premium tour on the way back down and with a few words of encouragement
marched past the American tourists bouncing up like Energiser Bunnies.
Even more slippery on the way back down, we snickered at
women tottering past in thongs and sandals while trying not to slide down on
our backsides. We enjoyed a magnum
whilst waiting for everyone else then back to the taxi of death for the trip
back home. As we walked up to the cabbie
I said a jaunty “Ciao” he clearly did not recognise us as it was only once we
stopped with our other intrepid travelers he managed to squeeze a weak “ciao”
out the side of his mouth.
The trip back
was much the same, more garbage, graffiti and Astroturfed balconies. He made a random stop to pick up some fags
and a sparkplug‽ For a moment we though he was going to try to change it while
driving but clearly it was our lucky day.
He refrained and dropped us off on the other side of the road from the
drop off point so we slunk down to the restaurant we had chosen for lunch
before Dodgy Brothers could sell us an overpriced tour of the Amalfi Coast (“only
200 euro for the day with your own private driver!”) I think we’ll take a train…
