Vesuvius, Herculaneum, Pompeii

25/10 TO THE SOUTH OF ITALY to see for ourselves.

With such simplicity, one of our fitness goals this year was to manage 5 rounds of the 10BX routine before coming home.  Done!  This morning, we thumped it out to the roar of Rome in the valley below whilst Kel watched the last part in her PJs.

Then it was school, top up shop, killing time before the latest possible check out just in case the rego arrives thus saving us endless phone calls and chasing around further into Italy’s disorganized South.

We washed Ed’s roof & big butt and then, there it was at reception, THE REGO (AKA “Tax Disc”).  The gorgeous bloke at reception who has been tracking the daily post, Raffaele, starting a jig as he saw us trudging down to ask about the mail!  Woo-hoo!   So, full of joy and ready for our next adventure, we took off for Mt Vesuvius and scary Napoli.

3 hrs later, driving into the outer suburbs, we noticed no traffic lights worked, then the massive piles of litter connecting the smaller clumps, then the chaos of the town, easily the biggest dump we’ve seen all year.  Litter, stray dogs with engorged teats, smashed up cars, rats scuttling about, people walking in the middle of the road and scooters on the footpaths, parking just anywhere, like on the white line in the middle of the road or 3 abreast on a skinny 2 lane road (all seems fine if you just stick on your hazard lights)…...unparalleled stench, anarchy & lawlessness - in what we’ve seen of the western world.

tomato fields

Naples with Vesuvius threatening

Somehow, we found our way to the road weaving up Mt Vesuvius where bit by bit the people thinned, the litter reduced a fraction but still gypsy camps abound right up to the gates of the crater walk.  All manner of folk trying to make a buck selling tourists booklets and painted fake volcanic rocks.  We took a detour to a sloping plateau where a lady jumped on us trying to sell her father’s book about Vesuvio (we bought it as she just didn’t stop talking) and her carpark full of stray dogs and the smell of urine. The agenda here? Guided walk up the crater in the morning??

Tearing ourselves away, we drove to the top gate.  It was a bit flatter but on red dirt and kinda human scary with a resident camp of gypsies packing up their trinket stalls from the day and making fires out of cardboard to keep warm by in the cooling night air.  An uneasy feeling had us turn around to find the back of a pizzeria where another Swiss van was camped for the night.  We asked the restaurant’s permission to stop the night and were treated to a splendid view over Naples & the port (about as close as we would want to get to Naples in the dark).  The night was so quiet in fact, that Jeff struggled to get to sleep!

from our camp site on Vesuvius, down to Naples

 26/10 POMPEII & HERCULANEUM

Woke to the foggy view down over waking Napoli, feeling smug to be at this elevation and separated from it all, and feeling relieved that Vesuvius didn’t blow it’s top last night (this is the longest time since last eruption in 500 years, so the pressure must be building down there!)   

Decided against the crater walk and headed the 6km downhill to explore the Herculaneum ruins.  TomTom doesn’t know the outer suburbs of Naples very well and directed us the wrong way down garbage strewn alleys, and the morning work commute was truly something to behold.  

We were warned about Italian drivers, we were warned especially about Naples drivers.  Italian drivers we have generally found to be impatient but loaded with initiative (=pushy), but also tolerant and skilled - they really know when there is a gap long or wide enough to slide in, not like us cautious but road-raging Australians.  On top of that they usually have a sense of humour.  And there are laws here that it seems legal to break, and laws you can’t break, and then you get the horn.  But Naples drivers are another thing.  None of the traffic lights we have encountered worked.  And after 45min of that 6km drive we understood why - there is no regard for road rules - it’s legal to break all the laws!  It seems the 1 rule is “who dares wins.”  If people don’t respect a red light while others assume a green light means go, that is a sure accident.  So we reckon they just turned off all the traffic lights and let the mob rule apply.  It took an hour to cover those 6km, but we probably travelled 30km.

Shaken and well stirred we found the Herculaneum car-park, sun-screened up and ventured in to what was an incredibly well preserved ruins.  The suburb was for the wealthiest of the Romans, much closer to Vesuvius than Pompeii, and was buried in the eruption under 16m of mud as well as ash.  It was only found in the last few hundred years, when thankfully people saw something other than a vast yard for pilfering precious marble and building materials.  Undoubtedly there was some pilfering but the condition of this 2000 yr old relic was staggering beautifully preserved, so that you could so easily imagine life pre-eruption (79AD) when they had no clue what that big mountain up the back was.  They did enjoy the incredibly fertile soil for crops and they had a ready supply of basalt for building, clues they had no ability to read.  And the tremulous earth in the days prior, must have been the god Vulcan at work.

Herculaneum with Vesuvius behind

fast food shop

Vulcan

toilet in the kitchen

We wandered the quiet streets, dropping into the grand houses of the squillionairres,  the communal baths, the food vendor stalls (heaps of those), with lots of good info on plaques.  The crowd thickened as we’d had our fill (about 2 hrs) so we piled back into Ed, set the TomTom for Pompeii, and held our collective breaths as we re-entered the fray of Neopolitan traffic.

Onto the tolled motorway with road works everywhere, lanes closed, no lines in many places, and you pay for that?  Absolutely!  The non-tolled alternative is what we travelled to get to Herculaneum.  Arrived at Camping Zeus just outside the gates of Pompeii Scavi, had a sandwich and then rocked up for some more ruins.  Decided to take a guide and met (Vinc)Enzo at the door.  A Neapolitan, he learnt his excellent cheeky English as a New York chef but now earns bigger bucks doing his highly entertaining tours of Pompeii.  He led us for  about 90 min through the Porta Marina, into the temple and forum areas, past the storage sheds for all the relics including some human casts, then to the brothel, the bakery, the bath houses, into some of the richer houses (loved the one with the “Beware of the Dog” mosaic on the floor in the entry), giving us a humorous run down on life at the time.  They peed in the streets and pood in the kitchen!  The faeces was bucketed out of the hole in the ground every few days and spread on the soil for fertiliser.  Eels were used to keep the water in the tanks clean(ish) and the streets were all well drained and flooded regularly, but the stench must have been rigid.  Enzo made the excellent point that they would have been accustomed to those odours, like we have become accustomed to the noise and odour of scooters, cars and trucks in Naples (not), which the Pompeiins may have found hard to come at (guaranteed).  Massive flat blocks were placed strategically for pedestrians to keep their feet out of the pee and allow the carts to pass by.

Beware the Dog

Enzo in the pizza oven

flour mill

a bath

phallic

column construction

"Hail Mary......."

Then he set us free and we scooted off towards the Amphitheatre and Grand Palace, 

then back along the avenues, through a wine making area, with the sun setting and the crowds dispersing we found ourselves in the Theatres, adjacent big and little ones with their brilliant curves.  

Here we sat in the cool quiet evening chewing the fat with Scott (Aussie traveller) and Steve (London traveller), wondering at our immediate surroundings and sharing pessimistic views of politics in our modern worlds. Wil & Kel amused themselves being Baldrick & Bernard.

Big Theatre

Little theatre

Stonkered but really pleased with a truly unusual & fabulous day, we nibbled a yoghurty dinner and read quietly.  The kids vanished into dreams, as did the parents who were soon woken by an incredibly loud and long explosion that might have been thunder, but we didn’t see lightning.  Both of us lay rigid with the thought of that mountain and it’s evil tricks - was this the next big one?   Soon reassured by the lightning and heavy downpour of rain and the storm went on all night.  

We’d read about trying to avoid staying in any camps around Napoli for the noise, poor facilities and ugliness but were really content with our wee spot, probably in an old orange grove.  We nestled under citrus trees plump with almost ready green oranges and enjoyed the quiet.  Acknowledging how much easier things are in the off season - I’m sure it’d be a challenge in summer.  No hot water for wash up and grungey toilet blocks are all do-able at the end of October.