Walk of the gods: Amalfitana

      Recently, we went on a hike on the Amalfi coast. The Amalfi, by the way, is probably our favorite destination in this area...breathtaking!  Anyway, we tagged along with some families we have met here. We have been hearing about this hike since we got to Italy. Right away, I knew it was going to be a place I would love! I was not disappointed.
     Not to leave out any detail of our adventure, earlier in the week the kids and I went to the Moira circus. Juliann and Race blogged about that so I thought I would just attach the links to their blogs instead of writing about it: http://julesitalianadventures.blogspot.it/  http://ultimatederp.blogspot.it/2013/02/the-cirkus-i.html

       Okay, back to the hike.  It took about 45 min to drive from downtown Naples to Bomerano/Agerola where we would begin the hike.  It is quite a pleasant drive; meandering through little villages along the way,etc. It is twisty,turny so for those who get car sick, it can be a rough ride
:-(  We were told the hike would be 2 hours or so(one way) and that there would be a lot of stairs-at one point, there are approximately 1700 stairs to go down but this time, we did not do the massive succession of stairs.  It was so wonderful to be out on the hike.  Residents use the trail to move their animals frequently; in fact, there was a herd of goats that we got to see.  The air smelled of barns and farm land-it was divine! :-)  The terrain was diverse: rocks, sand, dirt paths.  Sometimes we were right on the edge of a cliff and then other times right next to caves.  Even though the weather wasn't perfect the day we went out, it was so cool to see the fog roll in and out and so many different cloud formations all around.  We hiked into a little town near Positano. 
         All 19 of us (that includes our friends 2 dogs) stopped in a little restaurant for lunch; Santa Croce. Wonderful food!!  What a great reward for all that hiking.  I thought it was a reward because, in my ignorance,I thought that we would be catching a bus back to the start of the hike. Nope!  We had to hike back.  In my excitement of being there, I didn't realize how many hills and rock steps we had to go down on the way to the restaurant. Mamma mia!! What goes down, must come up?! or something like that... 
           Needless to say, I had worked off all of my lunch by the time we got back to the car. (I'm always hungry it seems! haha).  Isn't it appropriate for me to have placed a picture of a horse eating?  You thought I was going to post a picture of me with gelato or something didn't you? :-) 

 

 View of the water in front of Positano

 Our car in the fog at the end of the hike

          Did I mention the weather report said thunder and lightning were imminent for that evening? Well, we knew if that was correct we had to hurry back to the cars. We didn't quite make it back before the weather started to turn on us. The wind picked up so much, at one point, I was pushed against the hill next to the path (so glad it was not in the direction of the cliff..ahhh!) The fog came in so it was hard to see where we were going. Also, at a fork in the path, we weren't overly confident of what way to go, but fortunately, we chose correctly. Then, it started to rain-big, heavy, slow drops of rain. The group I was hiking with got seperated from the majority so a few came back looking for us to make sure we got back okay. It was a little sketchy at the end but we can't wait to go back.