Years of Poems and Spirits

We weren’t quite finished with Capri just yet. I wanted to take a boat tour aournd the island, and to visit a place called Blue Grotto. So instead of heading to the train station, Song and I decided to go to Capri first then take a ferry to Naples.

We deposited our luggages at a gift store then bought a boat tour ticket to visit the Blue Grotto. It didn’t take long to get there. I didn’t know what exactly it was. Looking from outside, it was a small cave entrance on the water. Since it is so small, people had to get off bigger tour boat on to 4 person row boats to visit inside.

The sky was less clear today and the wind was picking up. Because the openning was so tiny, some bigger waves could easily cover it up. To get out the cave, the guide rowing the boat had to hold on to a chain and pull the boat out. Everyone else had to lay on their faces or backs, to avoid being caught by the entrace ceiling. It was a ritual everybody seemed to enjoy.

When we arrived, there was already a line of tour boats ahead of us. Some were much bigger than ours. The tour guide said we had to wait and took us to see some mountain goats on another cliff. When we came back, the line seemed to get only longer. But the guide said the guys selling tickets on a boat next to the cave had been keeping track of the order.

So we waited. And waited. And waited more. The sea was getting rougher. When the boat moved, the up and down motion was pretty rhythmic. After it stopped, and being so close to a cliff shore and to other boats, the wave seemed to come from all directions except above. We felt like being stir fried in a master chef’s wok. Some fellow visitors fell visibly sick and we were just barely hanging on.

Finally, it was our turn. If there was any sense of discomfort, it disappeared quickly once we passed the entrance. It was a magical world. None of “it is like …” could describe the sense of wonder flowing through everyone’s mind at the moment.

It turned out the cave was more like a helmet. The entrance side wall does not touch the sea floor. So the sunlight from outside is reflected by the white sand and diffused, from bottom up, into the water in the cave. So the cave was pitch dark but there was this uniformly translucent, crystal blue water in it.

The tour guides started singing and some people used flash lights to take pictures of each other. We were just holding our breath and try to imprint every moment to our memories. It was well worth the wait.

When we got back to the habor, it was almost the time for our ferry to Naples. Since Sorrento and Naples (with Pompeii in between) were at two ends of a giant bay, it was faster to take a ferry from Capri to Naples than to take a train from Sorrento. We originally thought about staying in Naples for one night but the travel consultant at Rick Steves subtly hinted it was not the most desirable place in Italy. On our way from habor to train station, we sat in a taxi and looked out to the streets. It was not too bad but reminded me the old industrial sections of Baltimore.

We arrived in Rome in less than 3 hours. We randomly picked a hotel recommended by Rick Steves. It was called Lancelot Hotel near the Colosseum, a favorite among U.N. workers in Rome. We were pretty tired from early morning’s rolling and rocking so decided to have dinner in the hotel. We met some very interesting folks: one Belgium environmental economics scholar, and two ladies from Germany, one of which apparently married an Italian and has lived in Rome for 20 years. The other spoke a perfect Oxford English, and was in Italy to learn Italian. Finally we were joined by the chef of the night, who was a very learned gentleman. We dinned, wined and exchanged stories. It was a wonderful evening.