Some of the challenges of driving
in Italy are the mountains, there are lots of mountains. The roads around and
though these mountains show off some pretty amazing Italian engineering. Our drive
from the south to the Amalfi Coast is long and mountainous and quite dramatic
at the finish.
It is no easy feat to build fast
freeways through mountains. The road from Sicily to Naples is stunning. It is a
series of tunnels and bridges. A tunnel through a mountain followed by a bridge
over a valley, followed by another tunnel through a mountain followed by
another huge bridge over a valley. And so it goes for hundreds of kilometres.
The tunnels are up to two kilometres long and the bridges are often hundreds of
metres high, yet the road barely undulates.
Deciding to detour, off the
highway to the seaside for lunch seems like a good idea. The sun is shining,
the surf is up and the sand is black. The secondary road adds another couple of
hours to an already long trip. The road is good but winds around the mountains
and as there are no overtaking lanes so it’s a slow journey stuck behind three
very large trucks.
Twenty kilometres from our
destination we relax feeling we have almost arrived when we encounter another
engineering marvel, The Amalfi Coast Road. Again the problem is the mountains, which
literally descend into the sea. The road is carved into the side of the cliff
and is incredibly picturesque, apparently. Enjoying the scenery is not an
option as we try desperately not to scrape the little brown frog (Citroen C4) on
a cliff or a passing car, or both at the same time. It is breathtakingly narrow
and includes many blind corners. In theory the speed limit is 30km/h and
overtaking is not an option. In practice the cars, vans, trucks and buses are
traveling fast and overtaking regularly and aggressively. Cars are parked in
non-parking zones, motorcyclists talk on their mobile phones while riding, a
group of cyclists take up a whole lane and pedestrians meander along the road,
there is no footpath. At one point we are overtaken on a blind corner, a car appears
around the bend, we screech to a halt allowing the guy on the wrong side to zoom
back into our lane, the driver coming in the other direction is nonchalantly talking
on his mobile phone. We age ten years. Strangely, if you are driving cautiously
you often get an unmerciful blast on the horn from the car behind, but when
someone overtakes on the wrong side and almost causes a head on collision, the
response seems to be…respect!
After a long day in the car
we make it to Amalfi, which at first glance seems to be worth all the effort.
However, if we ever decide to come back… we might catch the bus!.
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