Pompei, Italy

Saturday 27th October 2007 Certe Notti B&B Pompei
We went today using the train and metro to National Museum at Napoli to see the recovered treasures from Pompei. It taught us that nothing has changed over the last 2500 years, even the instruments found in the doctor's house are similar to today's. Axes, chisels, coins and Ethiopian ploughs are exactly the same as they were here in 200BC.
Some of the statues and frescoes (paintings on the walls) were like new. The floor mosaics were so delicate and intricate that leaving them on the floor would have ruined them, so they have been well restored and preserved in the museum.
We visited the little church of San Siviero where there are famous (well deserved fame) marble statues of "the Veiled Christ" and a fisherman wrapped in his fishing net. You would never say they had been chiseled out of marble, they were so delicate and well done. The best, however for me was a marble statue of a man climbing out of his coffin, looking, so deathly white and ghostly, I was sure the sculptor had a warped sense of humour.
There is graffiti everywhere, no wonder they have the reputation for being such good artists. It is on the train, on the stations, on the walls, just everywhere. Some is actually quite colourful. On our way home on the train we stopped at Erculano, (Herculaneum) the other city wiped out by Vesuvius in 79AD. It was a port town with narrower streets and smaller than Pompei, although the houses were probably more luxurious. They haven't even excavated ¼ yet as the old city lies underneath the new one. It wasn't as devastated as Pompei, although it was hit by all five 'surge clouds' Pompei was hit by three, and amazingly some of the buildings' roofs are still intact. Buried under 12m of ash and lava the city has been beautifully preserved. Every house had mosaic floors, magnificent wall paintings on every wall of every room, and most had a courtyard with a water feature and a garden enclosed in a roofed quadrangle. Scorched to charcoal by the heat, and thus preserved, are papyrus scrolls from one house and wooden beams in the houses all over. Walnuts in a dish here, a sandwich there, even wax writing tablets with the wax not melted were preserved by 'shock cocoons' when all else in the room was devastated. I enjoyed Erculano better than Pompei.

Friday 26th October 2007 Certe Notti B&B Pompei
I had just read a fascinating book about Pompei and Herculaneum, (Ghosts of Vesuvius by Charles Pellegrino) so today was really exciting for me to visit the old city of Pompei which was buried 12m under volcanic ash after Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. Pompei was a large Roman city from 500BC to 79AD. The Italians rediscovered it in the 1500s while digging an irrigation canal, but only started excavations in the 1800s and it is a work in progress, as we saw them injecting glue into walls, stabilizing the plaster, digging, erecting scaffolding and restoring.
The town is very similar to the old Roman towns we saw in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, but this one retained the obvious affluence of general populous. They had slave chambers, servants quarters, beautiful murals and intricate mosaic floors. They had been using pressurized tapped water from towers to the houses through lead pipes. The streets were paved with huge slabs of rocks with grooves worn down by the cart wheels. The streets had gutters, pavements, and the road was recessed half a meter down from the pavements with stepping stones at pavement level across the streets. Speed was already a problem, as there were speed bumps in the streets. Security for the shops was addressed by having sliding doors which slid along the grooves in the door step.
The hollows left by the decomposed bodies in the ash have been filled with plaster, and then excavated, resulting in plaster moulds of the people who died in the surge clouds. Sometimes whole families died together. A lone cast of a dog with its chain at the end of its tether died in agony by suffocation as it could no longer climb up the mounting ash. We spent six hours there, and could have spent days exploring. Many of the houses are closed to visitors because they are still being restored.
We are now exhausted because we are so unfit!!
At the restaurant a ham roll cost R50 and 500ml water R15 so although we bought the water, we didn't eat till we returned to the Landy.
Diesel fuel is R12.50/l, but milk is 'only' R9/l. Meat costs about R90/Kg, but then a cooked medium sized chicken costs R40.

Thursday 25th October 2007 Certe Notti B&B Pompei
We decided to proceed straight towards Pompei. We went through some nice farm land today in between the mountains, but not a large area.
We even saw one pivot and a lot of "I"&P. They had planted mainly fruit trees and vegetables under plastic tunnels and a bit of lucern.
We saw one large dairy farm. Most of beef cattle we have seen have been nice Charolais. Unusually, we can see more from the freeways here than the little byways (except in the tunnels) because of the trees next to the roads. The first tunnel we went into Nev was frantically looking for the light switch. I couldn't make out what the panic was because the lights were on. Then he realized he couldn't see because he had his dark glasses on. He said: "Shoo, what a relief to be able to see". I nearly wet myself!
The Italian's favourite hobby is making tunnels. Sometimes in a 10Km section of road we go through 10 tunnels of between 200m and 1Km long.
The roads are excellent and we are convinced that as soon as they have nothing to do they say: "Where can we build a tunnel?" Sometimes there are tunnels even where we wouldn't put a tunnel. The Italians are also the worst in the world at parking cars. Most of the roads are so narrow, there are 'no parking' and 'tow-away' signs all over. This is no problem, because they just park on the pavement and the people have to walk on the road. When there is parallel parking and there is no room to fit in, they think they have fitted the car in if they put the front between the parked cars and leave the backside sticking into the road. This causes huge congestion. Most of them also got new hooters for Christmas and hoot for any hold up (but not as bad as in Cairo).
Found a B&B in mid town Pompei and went for a walk around the town. We joined what we thought was a tour group and entered a cathedral at 6pm. We walked around admiring the beautiful paintings inside on the ceiling, when we looked down everyone was sitting and the priest had started the sermon. Luckily they hadn't locked the doors and we snuk out.
Nev's beard is causing us a lot of amusement. He was mobbed by four Italian women in the village, but they were talking Italian so fast we couldn't understand what they were saying, but we worked out they said Nev had a lovely beard. He stands out like a sore thumb as none of the Italians have a beard longer than stubble. In Tunisia they wanted to know if Nev was Russian.

Wednesday 24th October 2007 Largo Argo Camping
Traveling north and east into the mountains, I can see why the Italians liked Ethiopia and thought nothing of building roads there.
Here it is similar, but not as varied. The mountains are covered in chestnut trees in their golden autumn leaves. The little two and three-story clusters of houses snuggle into the sides and the bottom of the mountains rather than perched on the tops, as in Sicily. There is very little agriculture, mainly small vineyards, market gardens and a bit of siviculture. This campsite is in a glade of tall pines next to a half-full lake ready for the winter rains and snow. And it is freezing cold and raining, so we have taken a bungalow and are snug inside cooking our dinner.

Tuesday 23rd October 2007 Il Casale, Tropea near Vibo Valentia
The weather forecast says it will clear partially today, and this is such a nice place we are going to stay for two nights. So, since I am now able to communicate in Italian, as the Auzies very kindly gave me their phrase book, and with much help from the family here, we ventured out to buy a new thermostat for Landy. We haven't needed one up to now, but it is so cold, and the engine is cooling down when we descend a long downhill, that Nev decided to change the thermostat. It didn't help though.
I am always amazed at the reaction I get when I speak a foreign language. Either (in Swahili or Arabic) I get a reaction of surprise and pleasure that I can 'speak' their language, or with Italian, they start to speak back to me as if I am Italian, so fluently that I cannot follow them. Either way it gives me great pleasure and a sense of achievement to be able to communicate. I battled in Tunisia with no French phrase book, and their Arabic was totally different from that in Egypt. When I said shukran (thank you) to them, they took great pains to explain it was 'merci'. Oh well, I have been warned that in France they actually laugh in your face if you try to speak French.
Because of the cold weather we make coffee in the lay-byes on the side of the road. Today two Italian men stopped and came and spoke to us.
It is amazing that when they realize you cannot understand them, they speak louder and together and faster and gesticulate wider with their hands all at the same time. We stand open-mouthed in amazement, and when they stop I get out my phrase book. He was a citrus inspector and he had a Landrover like ours and we chatted for a long time.
Eventually he gave us armfuls of the samples he had collected from all his citrus farms, so our Landy is full of lovely oranges from Italy mixed with the ripening pomegranates from Tunisia.
The rest of the day was spent cleaning up, doing washing and relaxing.
One needs a day off from traveling now and again.

Monday 22nd October 2007 Il Casale, Tropea near Vibo Valentia
We chatted to Gunilla Grimlund and Olle Ostberg (from Visby, Gotland in Sweden) who were staying at the same B&B as we were and exchanged addresses in case we are in each other's countries.
The clouds parted as we were passing Mt Etna and we saw the snow covered summit for a few seconds, and it is bitterly cold today with a very strong wind blowing and squalls of rain and sleet. We made our way to Messina on the northern tip of Sicily and drove onto the ferry to Italy mainland with no problems. Once landed, we explored around the southern tip and found many places to stay had been closed for the winter. The beaches would look really inviting in summer, but this weather is like Cape Town in winter. We wasted time at a closed caravan park while the owner tried to find us somewhere to stay in vain. We tried a hotel, but refused to pay €135 for one night (R1350!!). At 7pm in the dark and wet and quite desperate by now to find a place to sleep we drove up a steep hill along a very dark and overgrown ally which had hotel signs and were very doubtful about finding accommodation as there were no sign of lights anywhere and I was sure the place would be closed too. When we arrived there was a man with a windbreaker in the rain, directing his vehicle's lights at a building and he welcomed us to his hotel saying the lightning had just put out the lights. He was so welcoming, and we couldn't believe we had somehow been led to this place.
Inside this candle- and torch-lit dining room were two Aussies (Hayden and Hein) who are here helping to get the local tuna-fish farm working properly. They had been requested by their Japanese buyers to come from their farms in Lincoln, South Auz to teach the Italians how to catch the fattened tuna in the 'feedlots'. The tuna-farming process is that tuna are caught in the open sea (2 months) and placed into huge cages and fed (6 months) until the fat content is acceptable to the Japanese market. Then divers (these two) get into the cages and catch the tuna, now up to 100Kg, by hand, cut their heads and tails off, pump water through their arteries to get rid of the blood, and freeze them to send to Japan. (2 months). They then have one month of maintenance work and one month holiday (this is when they come to Italy every year to teach Italians what to do). Very interesting chat we had with them. In Auz they catch the tuna, put them in the cages, feed them AD1mil worth of food and sell the fish for AD15mil to the Japanese.