Trekking

      Disclaimer:  probably the least authoritative voice in the world on hard-core trekking in Italy is a sixty-seven-year-old chubbers.  But perhaps there’s some value even in that.  To most of the world, a trek is a long, difficult voyage, and it can certainly connote that in Italy as well.  But here it can also mean a nice amble out in nature.  And as I hope you have gleaned from Sandy’s photos, if not my little blogs, there is a wealth of spectacular nature to amble amid, here in the Cilento.

Here, and I suspect in all parts of Italy, there are hundreds of sentieri (trails) of only moderate difficulty that can be accessed by anyone in reasonably good health.  And there are trekking clubs for almost all of them, many with excellent web sites and offering guided hikes at regular intervals.  Probably the most popular is trekking.it.  The one problem we have found with Italian trekking is that trail markers, especially at trail heads, are poor or non-existent.

Right here in Agropoli, from the Bay of Trentova, there are several sentieri which traverse various parts of Monte Tresino, the local hill which forms the southern terminus of the Bay of Salerno.  

The Bay of Trentova from the coastal trail

The city wall of abandoned San Giovanni

The church and monastery in the little village

A view from Monte Tresino

Monte Tresino is only a bit over a thousand feet high, so even the trek to the top is not just for the hard-core.  We’ve enjoyed hikes here several times, most notably one along the coast past Il Vallone, an old Roman port from which spectacular Roman archaeology was extracted, primarily by our scuba-diving buddy, Franco Castelnuovo:  lead anchors from Roman ships, dozens of amphorae, gobs of ceramics.  All now in the Agropoli and Paestum museums.  Also on the mountain is the evocative little abandoned village of San Giovanni di Tresino, established in 957 around a church and monastery but abandoned in 1962.  We’ve also hiked out to the Torre dei Saraceni, the 'Tower of the Pirates', at one point designed to spot and warn the locals of the approach of Moorish pirates, but also perhaps used by those same pirates, who captured Agropoli in 882 and used it as a citadel for their local raids until they were forced out in 915.

Monte Soprano above, Monte Sottano below, and the Canyon of the Three Mountains

More recently we hiked part of the Sentiero di Tremonti, the Trail of the Three Mountains, a trail which leads through a strange and spectacular feature of three local mountains near the beautiful little towns of Giungano and Trentinara.  A look at the map shows two parallel mountains, the northerly Monte Soprano, aptly named ‘Mount Higher', and below it Monte Sottano.  You guessed it, ‘Mount Lower’.  The Romans would be proud of such literalness.  Both are gorgeous in their own right, but the feature that is really intriguing is that cleft that you see right through the middle of Monte Sottano.  My friend and font of information on all things seismic and geological, Andrea Tesoniero, tells me this was caused when the European tectonic plate, overthrusting the Adriatic plate to form the central Apennines, got in such a hurry that it ripped a tear in its britches.  Andrea has a Ph.D. and is doing a post-doc at Yale, so his explanation was a bit more technical, but you get the picture.  That small cleft, a fairly common feature in such peripheral zones, provided a channel for a mountain stream, which eventually carved its way down the limestone and dolomites of the mountain to create the canyon.

The parcheggio with the canyon in the background

Trailhead markers can be a bit iffy.  This one is in the middle of a quarry.

Acess to the trail through an old quarry.

We were introduced to the canyon by our friends Fernando and Fabio during our first summer here back in 2010.  The guys, very much tongue-in-cheek, referred to it as ‘The Grand Canyon of the Cilento’.  A bit of an exaggeration, but it’s still beautiful.  There’s a local myth, unsubstantiated by any historical evidence, that Spartacus and his followers holed up here during the Third Servile War of 71 BCE.  It’s a wild and woolly place, so if they didn’t, they missed a good chance.

What is undoubtedly true is that the trail is absolutely gorgeous.  The little parking lot is right off the main highway to Giungano.  From there you hike up a local road and access the trail from the grounds of a former quarry.  You wander along the western flank of the torrente (seasonal stream) that carved the canyon, a stream that forms the headwaters of the Solofrone River which empties into the Tyrrhenian Sea near Agropoli.  

The view southward from the trail.

Looking north toward Monte Soprano.

Walking through the beautiful macchia.

To the left are the towering cliffs of Monte Cantenna, the western extension of Monte Sottano, to the right the valley of the torrente, and behind you to the south, sweeping panoramas over the agricultural plain and the hills and mountains of the Cilento.  You climb up through myrtle, broom, lentisk and other elements of our Cilentan macchia, ‘scrub’, most in flower and adding their ravishing scents to the oregano, thyme, rosemary, catmint and a half dozen other herbs that grow wild here in such profusion.  Our cute little local green lizards, which have the strange compulsion to run across a path or road any time they sense movement coming,  are the standard fauna.  The trail trends steadily upwards and is fairly steep in places, a challenge for the old geezers, but a good one. Soon, ahead of you appear the towering cliffs of Monte Sottano, karstic formations carved into the soft limestone of the mountain, some towering up to 1300’ and more.

Karstic cliffs of Monte Sottano

A bridge leading to the eastern side of the torrente.

There are several picnic areas along the trail.

Eventually the trail turns eastward and you cross a beautiful wooden bridge over the torrente, already dry after the winter rainy season but still beautiful in the verdant setting created by those same winter rains.  The trail traces the eastern flank of the stream for a stretch until you reach La Cascata, the cascade created by the steep northern slope of the canyon. No cascade this time of the year, but the huge boulders tumbled down by heavy floods gave some idea of the potential power of winter spates. 

The Cascata in March 2014.  Photo courtesy of Amatori Running Sele.

      We stopped and enjoyed some refreshment and a breather at a tranquil little picnic area, then made our way about a quarter mile up the eastern slope of the canyon before old knees began protesting.  For younger legs, the trail reaches the shoulder of of the mountain, immediately beneath some of those sheer cliffs, then ambles along eastward till it reaches a local highway.

The return hike was a bit difficult for the first bit; the soil and gravel of the trail is loose and the slope steep, making footing treacherous.  But soon the descent became a gentle downward slope and we enjoyed vista after vista down to the south and eastward to the towering cliff upon which lies the little town of Trentinara.

On the right, the plateau on which lies Trentinara.

And here's the view looking down from Trentinara's 'Terrazza del Cilento'.

Speaking of which, we have now examined the Vallone di Tremonti up and down.  Literally.  That first year we were here, Fabio and Fernando took us to the little town of Trentinara and introduced us to the Terrazza del Cilento, a huge, spectacular terrace at the western end of the town.  Since then we have been back repeatedly to gawk at the views. The name is apt:  from the terrace you can see all our three mountains, as well as a huge swath of the Paestum Plain, the ruins of Paestum, the cerulean sea beyond, and down toward the south our beloved Agropoli, Monte Tresino, and the mountains of the Cilentan highlands.  A good reminder that some things, no matter how right they may seem from one perspective, can be just as riveting from the opposite one as well.

Aperitivo!

We love the Cilento any time of the year,  but one of the things we loved about being here in September and October was the more relaxed pace of life in the Fall.  I’m happy to say the same applies to the Spring as well.  It’s not that people aren’t busy now, but without the hordes of tourists on the weekends in July and all during August, the logistics of work, school, and shopping are just much simpler.  Even the crazy Italian drivers seem more chill, unless I’m just becoming accustomed to some of their frivolity.

This atmosphere feels more genuinely Italian.  In general, Italians are hard-working folk, but they don’t worship work and materialism the way many Americans do.  Family, good food, friends, traditions—those are the keystones of a balanced life, and they require time.  Italians just prioritize time to slow down, socialize, get out to the piazza to schmooze.  And one of the most delightful manifestations of that urge is the aperitivo.

The aperitivo is similar to the Spanish tapas or even the stop by your local bar after work, but it’s also different.  There’s a great deal of debate as to when and where the aperitivo became a standard part of the Italian repertoire.  According to Andrea Adams’ article in the Huffington Post, from which I’m shamelessly cribbing here, some think it was invented in 1786 by Antonio Benedetto Carpano, creator of modern vermouth, as a way to hustle his hooch.  Others attribute the ritual to Gaspare Campari in the 1860s.  Campari opened a bar in Milano and began serving snacks and drinks which he mixed with his home-brewed Campari liqueur, now world famous.

Crunchies and drinks at Bar Anna.  On the right is the classic Aperol spritz.

Bread sticks wrapped with prosciutto

Personally, I think like so many food myths, these are both probably wrong.  For one thing, vermouth was invented, not in the eighteenth century, but in the first, by the Romans, who were entranced by a new drink called conditum, a mix of wine and various herbs and spices.  None other than crazy Nero supposedly introduced the fad of serving it as a chilled (with imported snow!) pre-dinner drink with nibbles.  And one of the standard herbs in the mixture was artemisia, otherwise known as wormwood, which gives both its name and its characteristic bitterness to vermouth.

Sandy's concoction, blood-orange juice with amaretto

Olives with local stracchino cheese

In any case, the name aperitivo comes from Latin aperire, ‘to open’ (as in aperture and April) to describe a slightly bitter, low-alcohol cocktail served with small bites to start the digestive juices flowing.  The aperitivo is drunk after work, sometime between 5 and 9, so that you’ll be ready for that cena at 9, the standard dining hour here except in winter.  Its opposite is the digestivo, also a bitter, in this case a tiny dram of an infused alcohol often flavored with bitter almonds or walnuts.  Here the idea is to aid digestion after a heavy meal.  Hey, it may sound weird, but it works.  Besides, its bad form to argue anything food with an Italian; trust me, you’ll make a fool of yourself.

Bitterish cocktails with foods appeared first in the modern world in the bars in Milan in the 1920s, and they have become widespread all over Italy.  In some of the big cities, the ritual has morphed into the apericena, a cocktail which gives you access to a buffet of appetizers, and in some cases free rein to go back for seconds or even thirds without buying another drink.  Needless to say, extremely popular with the college crowd.

Canapés are popular noshes.

An aperitivo overlooking the Greek  temples in Paestum

Typical drinks for an aperitivo are the Aperol and Campari spritzes; that is, either Aperol or Campari liqueur (both somewhat bitter from the chinotto, the bitter orange) mixed with sparkling wine  and soda.  Also popular are the Americano, which substitutes vermouth for the liqueurs, and the Negroni composed of Campari, gin and vermouth.  Drinks are beautifully presented and delicious.  Our favorite refinement is the straw made from compressed sugar which they use at Bar Nazionale. Foods are served in stylish serving dishes and are more or less elaborate.  At a minimum there will be salty, crunchy snacks such as peanuts, chips, or our local taralli, little baked biscuits in a donut shape.  Otherwise you may see olives, grilled veggies, tiny canapés of all sorts, Italian cheeses, even fresh pasta.  In some of the big cities, bars may resort to international foods such as curried chicken and couscous.

The redheads enjoy some social time.

In our area, bars offer strictly aperitivi, not apericene.  And that is fine with me.  A nice aperitivo for two people here in the Cilento, both food and drink, will set you back all of ten bucks. There are places in my home city where you can’t get a single, decent glass of wine for that price. If you’re still ravenous, the best pizza in the world will cost you six, and you can have a beer with that for an extra buck fifty.  Just don’t expect the wood-fired pizza ovens to be ready before 8:30.

The one essential ingredient of the aperitivo is that you find a sidewalk table, order a drink, kick back, relax, unwind, enjoy the luscious weather, and socialize with your friends.  And don’t get in a hurry; if you get up out of your seat in less than an hour, the barkeep will be highly insulted.  Miss Sandy and I often aren’t overflowing with conversation since we’re together 24-7, but that’s just fine as well.  The other after-work ritual here in the Mezzogiorno is the evening stroll, the passeggiatta, and it’s easily the best curbside show on earth:  couples ambling along together, friends of the same sex—both male and female—strolling along arm-in-arm, completely unselfconscious, teenagers and especially preteens doing the Italian version of the cruise, children riding scooters, trikes, bikes, and hover boards, proud mamas and papas pushing strollers, often with an even prouder nonna along, and dogs, dogs, dogs everywhere and all socializing as well.  I promise you, there is a wonderful communal vibe that is absolutely palpable.  And Sandy and I just sit and sip and smile, delighted to be even a small and unobtrusive part of that thrumming human context.

One of our favorites, in the beautiful hill town of Torchiara

Everybody enjoys the passeggiatta, even if you're just a spectator.

Wanderlust

The Tower of Rutino

    So, here we are back in the Cilento, partially recovered from the rigors of travel, and eager to start our new adventure.  Tuesday we had big plans to visit ‘The Valley of the Orchids’, about two hours away on the lower slopes of Monte Cervati, the highest peak in the Cilento.  The Valley is a vale between two spurs of the mountain where some 215 species of wild orchid have been found so far, out of some 315 that have ever been found in all of Europe.  And mid-May is peak season for orchid blooms.  But Tuesday morning brought a forecast of thunderstorms in Sassano, the little town that serves as a point of departure for the route, and four hours of drive time is a chunk of time to have wasted on an aborted excursion, especially when we have the rest of the month.  So we decided to reschedule for Thursday.

In the meantime, though showers threatened closer to home as well, our perennial wanderlust demanded satisfaction, so we headed down the superstrada and onto a lower spur of Monte Stella and to the promising little village of Rutino.

The medieval village of Rutino seen from the south

We had been to the outskirts of the village six years ago, on our way with Fernando to the imposing castle of Rocca Cilento, further up the ridge.  But Fernando just had to take a short detour to show us the panoramic views out over the Alento River valley and the mountains of the interior.  Plus, there was this strange little tower right along the road, a sort of whimsical tower whose upper floor is a fantastic condominium for birds!  Definitely a charmer.

Views from the 'Tower of the Birds'

But we never really entered the village itself, and one thing we have learned in our travels here is that practically every little village here is a medieval gem.  And Rutino is only 20 minutes away.  Irresistible.

We entered the village by the same road as before, agog at that panorama and smiling at our old friend the birdie high-rise, ambled into the Centro of the little town, parked, and began our stroll at the mother church, La Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo. 

Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo

The church was unusually large for such a small town, reminding us that during the reign of the Sanseverino family, Rocca Cilento was the capitol of the Barony of Cilento and Rutino an important satellite town.  The church was pretty in the typical provincial Cilentan way, but sadly, was closed, as so often.  But behind it we found a huge abstract sculpture which seemed completely incongruous until we discovered it is a ‘Totem of Peace’, a symbol of the yearning for world peace designed by famous Italian sculptor Mario Molinari.  This is one of some 200 such sculptures installed in cities around the world, and here was one in little Rutino!  Molinari himself explains the symbolism:  “The red sail symbolizes the voyage.  This Sea of ours, the cradle of our civilization, theatre of struggles and battles between the peoples who have lived here but also of trade, of commerce, and of the advances of knowledge.  The sea celebrated by the myth in which Ulysses is lost and continually wandering in a desperate search for the way home.  It is red to symbolize the quest, the sunset, and the return of the immutable rhythms of the universe.”

Molinari's 'Totem of Peace'

Rutino is one of those hill towns strung out along the crest of a ridge, in this case the ridge of the spur, and so is about three miles long and a hundred feet wide.  Eventually it scrambles up the ridge all the way to Rocca Cilento.  We could go up or down, but we figured the oldest part of the town was the upper, and so headed up.  Good call.  We wandered up narrow streets, completely immersed in a medieval world, what with the stone houses on both sides with their lovely old doors, seductive little courtyards, and the portali, the massive stone archways which mark the entrance to ancient palazzi.  Eventually we came to the gate of the Palazzo Cuoco, otherwise known as the Palazzo dello Colombaio, the palace in whose courtyard the ‘Tower of the Birds’ is located, and there saw the stairways that provided access to its upper floors. Easy to imagine some baron and baroness on some warm summer evening climbing to the top of the little tower to gaze at that spectacular view and enjoy the cool breezes and the twittering of the swallows that inhabited the tower’s top floor.

Medieval street scenes

For, you see, these little bird houses had a very practical function to go along with the whimsical side.  Swallows eat a tremendous number of mosquitoes every year, and down below in the Alento valley in medieval times the land had become swampy and malarial.  So what we are so charmed by is also a natural mosquito control!

We scrambled down a scala to the highway below to get another look at the tower and the elaborate alleé that leads up to it, in this case a combination of ramps, balconies, and stairways on basically four levels.  I like to imagine some visitor to the palace parking their carriage in the piazza at the base and strolling up the ramps and along the balconies, stopping at each level to marvel at those views.  Some people know how to make an entrance; the baron knew how to create one.

'The Colombaio'

The dramatic approach

We ambled back down to the center of the village and noticed a large placard for the ‘Flight of the Angel’ festival which we had just missed last weekend.  Now, every little hamlet in southern Italy has a festival of its patron saint and every one of them is a must-see, but I have to say, we are especially heartbroken to have missed this one.

The church rigged for the feast

'The Flight of the Angel'

This is what we learned after the fact:  The procession starts in the usual way.  The church faithful place the cult statue of St. Michael, the warrior archangel, you will recall, on a platform and it is carried through the streets accompanied by the priest, a band, and various Catholic fraternities.  All pretty standard stuff.  But then the drama begins!  In Sandy’s picture you will notice a cable running across the street about 30’ above the ground, and a small stage at the front of the church at street level.  A young man decked out in full Michael regalia and brandishing a sword and shield is mounted on a harness attached to the cable and slowly pulled across the length of the cable until he reaches the stage, where there are several imps (village children) accompanied by Lucifer himself!  Michael warns the Devil that he must repent his rebellious ways or face his inevitable fate, but Satan blusters that he’s ready to mix it up any time.  Michael flies on, to give Beelzebub time to change his mind, and the procession with the cult statue proceeds through the streets of the village in song and prayer and slowly returns to the church.

Then commences scene II.  Michael returns, flying in the opposite direction, and gives Lucifer one last chance to repent.  Spoiler alert: He refuses, and the fireworks begin!  And I am not just being metaphorical; the commencement of the battle is marked by a huge fireworks display (we saw the evidence behind the Totem of Peace, ironically).  Michael flails away at the Devil and his minions.  Lucifer falls to the ground, dazed and confused!  He admits his humiliating defeat and returns to the underworld!  Good triumphs over evil!  St. Michael flies in triumph to the balcony of the parsonage, is unharnessed, and receives the adoration of the crowd.

Saint Michael battles Lucifer

And all this in a tiny village with a population of less than 900 souls!  But that’s the Cilento for you.  We have seen gorgeous little hill towns in practically every region of Italy we have visited.  The thing which marks this unknown and uncelebrated part of southern Campania as special is simply that there are so many achingly, heartbreakingly beautiful little medieval gems.  We can easily name 50 every bit as charming as Rutino.  And the reasons for that are both fortunate and tragic.  The sad history of this area, blighted by wars, invasions, famines, malaria, plagues, and the pestilential depredations of the local aristocracy has meant that the area has been economically deprived for centuries and there has simply not been much financial incentive to tear down and modernize.  A happier reason I learned only recently, thanks to my seismologist friend Andrea.  We are located smack between two of the regions in all of Italy most vulnerable to earthquakes.  Basilicata to our east and Calabria to our south have been devastated repeatedly by tremendous temblors.  An earthquake in 1908 in Calabria, for example, killed well over 100,000 people (nobody knows the exact number).  And if you’ve seen the sad news recently about Amatrice, you know that every time a major quake occurs, several medieval towns lose a precious part of their historical essence.  Meanwhile, our fuzzy old mountains are in the Apennine Peripheral Zone, 60 km west of the upthrust zone, and there has not been a tremor here above 3.5 on the Richter scale since records have been kept.

The Cilento has it all:  spectacular scenery, with gorgeous mountains, a sparkling sea, crystal-clear to depths of thirty feet and more, and with more shades of blue than you can count.  Incredible people, incredible food, incredible history…. And another little medieval jewel, I swear to you, reader, every five kilometers!