Welcome back!
We caught the car ferry back from Sicily and drove to the town of Matera on mainland Italy. It was so cold there! The weather in general had changed (it's late autumn after all), plus Matera is fairly high up. We were ill-equipped for cold weather and with all our 'warm' clothes on we still froze!
Anyway, despite the wind and low temperatures, the town was still striking.
To understand Matera, I have to give you a very brief history lesson, sorry! This is one of the world's oldest continually inhabited cities. For thousands of years people lived comfortably in caves along the edge of the gorge. They had running water and a clever sewage system. By the 1800's though, there were more people than caves and overcrowding became a real problem. Over the next century or so, families were forced to move into caves meant as animal shelters. There were entire families and their animals living together in one cave with no running water. Living conditions were horrific. 50% of children died. Malaria was rampant.
In the 1950's, Carlo Levi, an author, brought the plight of these people to the attention of the public. Matera became the town that Italy was ashamed of. Public money flooded in and new houses were built. Today, tourism brings in new money and many old places are being renovated. The town is now a strange mix of the very old, the not-so-old and the new.
The old cave houses are in the lower parts of the town.
The newer sections are up higher.
The town is perched above a huge gorge.
I love the ingenuity of builders - this water drainage system is made from roof tiles.
We spent a few days here. We wandered around in the cold, checking out the amazing buildings.
This is possibly the only church where people get buried on the roof! The church is in a cave underneath where John is standing and holes have been dug into the rock to hold the bodies.
On the subject of bodies, we went into one church where they used to sit bodies under the church for 'draining'! Once the bodies had finished decomposing, they were taken elsewhere for burial. We never quite found out why this occurred. The even stranger thing is that these rooms for 'draining' were just downstairs from the altar of the church. I'm quite sure that on a hot day it wouldn't have been very pleasant going to church!
These are the niches where the bodies would sit. There must have been at least 50 or 60 of these under the church.
One of the places that had the biggest impact on me was an old cave house that had been turned into a museum. A cave of this size would have held a family with 5 or 6 kids, the horse or mule, a pig and the chickens. Yep - all in the one room.
Mum and dad plus some of the younger children slept in the big bed. The mattress was stuffed with leaves and the bed was raised up so the chickens could sleep underneath. The 'toilet' was a bucket behind the bed.
Chests of drawers were for storing items and a drawer could double as a cot for babies at night. There is a low wall behind the dark chest of drawers in the photo below - that's where the pig lived!
Directly across from the foot of the bed was where the horse or mule lived. Can you imagine the complete lack of hygiene? When Carlo Levi visited in the 50's, he found children dying of dysentery. Families were living with animal and human poo all around them, plus the pig and chickens would have carried diseases. Apparently the smell in summer was unbelievable.
We also checked out the city's old underground water cistern. Cleverly, the original builders joined up six caves to make an irregularly shaped cistern. It held water for hundreds of years which is remarkable seeing the town, and the cistern, are on top of a hill! The cistern fell out of use and was eventually lost under the new town. During modern excavation works they found it again. They sent scuba divers in first and the divers found an amazing collection of things that had fallen through the bucket holes in the top over hundreds of years. They found fob-watches, rings, coins and buckets. The cistern still fills up with water so they have to pump it out each night to let the tourists through.
The food in this area is renowned for coming from poor origins, so it's warm, hearty and simple. It's quite common to get pasta with a topping that consists of a few tomatoes and fried breadcrumbs! (It's not that exciting, believe me.) Many places in Italy give you a small appetiser for free while you wait for your meal. At one simple place that had an amazing bean soup, the appetiser was fried bread flavoured with garlic, onion, salt and a bit of tomato. It was really delicious! There are so many times on this trip when I've wondered what they do with all that bread that they give us with each meal that we rarely eat. I know of no other place that creates a dish like this with it, but they should!
We found one great restaurant and ate there two nights in a row. John ordered a bottle of red on the first night then what was left got put aside for the next night! Now that's service. I love the spelling too!
This restaurant, like many here, was in a cave and when we sat at our table we could hear what people were saying when they were sitting several tables away from us. It was like they were talking through a speaker or something as the cave reflected the sound in strange ways. We figured that they could therefore hear what we were saying so John said stupid things all night. When we left we got some really strange looks!
We had fun here but we were happy to leave Matera. We pulled into a petrol station en route to our next destination and saw these and just had to buy them! They weren't as good as our Twisties though.
We drove to a town up the mountains called Pietrapertosa. Yes, it's hard to pronounce but what a fantastic place it was!
We had a basic room but the view from our window was amazing. Note the rocks on the roof to keep the tiles on in the wind!
Our room was on a long, very steep staircase. That's our room in the photo below - the one with the railings going up to it.
The town was a maze of narrow lanes and stony steps. Unlike other towns we've been in, it felt very real. People lived here. It wasn't a tourist town.
Pietrapertosa is situated beneath a series of amazing rocky outcrops on the top of a mountain. The views over the town are spectacular.
Those huge rocks seem to hover over the town. Some places, like the cafe where we had breakfast each morning, were built right up to the rocks.
There was a very small museum of sorts and I took this photo of a photo taken from a drone. The rocks really form a solid backing to the town.
The first night we were there we went looking for something for dinner. Every place we went to was closed though so we ended up at a very basic local place, just because there was nothing else. The food was fine but the owner, Nicolas, was great. He spoke some English and we met his wife, son and his great waitress, Valentina. We soon felt like a part of the family. In the end we ate here every night!
The restaurant was also a bar (this is Italy after all) and we would sometimes talk to the locals as they came in for a drink. When I say 'talk' I mean we would say hello then add in a word here or there. John and I can speak far more Spanish than Italian but the two languages are similar so we could sometimes throw in Spanish words and people would understand. We would then bump into the same people at the market or down the street the next day and we would all say hello. We began to feel a little like locals!
The bar culture here is so different to home. Workmen, still in their work clothes, would come into the bar at the end of their day and order a Prosecco! Now that's my kind of after-work drink! Drinks were always had standing up at the bar. They would drink one Prosecco, drink it, then leave. Occasionally a rebel would have a beer but 9 times out of 10 Prosecco was the drink of choice.
Saturday night was pizza night and locals kept dropping in to pick up pizzas. Antonio, the son, was the pizza maker and they tasted great! Antonio is on the left with Valentina in the middle. The family loved having Valentina working for them as she was lovely and she spoke five languages!
One night was really busy because there was a special function on - a new priest had just started in the village so there was a lot of singing and celebrating happening in the function room upstairs. Kids kept coming through the the restaurant all night but they would always say hello. Nobody enters a shop or passes someone else without saying good morning or good afternoon, not even the kids. It's nice to see.
We have seen dried peppers on lots of menus in southern Italy. Again, it's poor people's food but it's really yummy! I love how this old lady had them drying on her balcony.
John and I thought we'd walk to the next town. With the small tourist office being closed we just looked up google maps and worked out where to go. First we went past the famous zip-line. At 120kph, it's one of the fastest in the world. We're now out of season though and the zipline wasn't running. Yes, that zip-line goes all the way to Castelmezzano, the town on the next hill that you can see in the distance!
The track was steep in sections and was stunningly beautiful. The rocks were wild and spectacular.
We had read that there were some via ferrata (literally iron way) routes around here. It is a path where steps and cables are attached to rocky or difficult terrain to enable people to climb across it. It began out of necessity during wartime and is now a sport. We came across a section and had to backtrack to go around it. We then came to another section but there was no other track. It looked pretty harmless so we climbed down one section using the cables to hold on to. It was great fun!
At the bottom, the track merged onto rock where steel steps led down to a swingbridge over a chasm. By now we realised we were actually on a track only for the via ferrata. As much as we would love to have gone further, we didn't have the equipment. You don't tackle a section like this without being attached to the cables by a harness. Sadly, we had to turn around and go back.
Never mind, we went back a slightly different way and the views were just as good!
The weather was turning a bit colder - it was absolutely freezing in the mornings. The cooler, cloudier weather gave us the most amazing sunset one night though!
The next day we tried to see if we could go on the via ferrata but it turns out they only operate on Sundays. If you have your own equipment you can go any time. So plan B was to try to walk to Castelmezzano again, seeing we didn't make it there the day before. This time we found out where the right track was. They have a sort of art installation set up along this track which is a bit weird as this is just a small hilltop town, although the zip-line brings in a reasonable number of tourists in season. There are rocky creations along the track that are supposed to tell the story of some famous hero who was enchanted by a witch. They were interesting anyway.
While we were walking past one of the installations, a local shepherd started to talking to John. John did a great job of understanding the Italian arm-waving. He understood enough of what the guy was saying about the art installation to nod and agree in all the right places - we hope. The guy seemed satisfied that he had had a conversation with John. It was very funny
The trees were really getting their autumn colours. It was a spectacular time to be out walking in the forest and farmland.
After climbing down the mountain from our town then half way up the next one, we finally made it to Castelmezzano! This town is more touristy but was still beautifully set below the rocks.
The walk back again was just as pretty.
Approaching Pietrapertosa we could see how the houses nestle around the jagged rocky outcrops.
Although the weather had been cold we really loved this place. Little old ladies in black hobbled along the streets and washing was strung across the lanes. Everything closed for a long lunch on weekdays and closed completely for most of the weekends. We would bump into people on the streets that we had met in the restaurant and they were happy to see us. Everyone says buongiorno to us. It was very much a community. It was wonderful!
'Til next time.
Heather and John
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