Viggianello

May 9, 2019

So, unexpectedly, we have decent WiFi in Terranova tonight so I can get back on track sooner than I’d expected. Just a day behind, not bad.

We received a warm sendoff from Roberto, one of the most pleasant innkeepers I can recall. And helpful - our bikes were assigned to the basement, down a corkscrewy staircase, and Roberto insisted on carrying Rachael’s up and down for her. Impressive, especially considering he’s not a young man.

We’re in a bit of a hurry to reach our destination today. Rachael slept badly again last night, mostly because she keeps waking up when she bangs her painfully sore index finger. She suffered an embedded sliver on our hike up the Rocca at Cefalu almost two weeks ago, and it still hasn’t worked its way to the surface. We want to get to Viggianello before one while the pharmacy is still open, so she can try to get some Epsom salts to soak it in.

Since we’re in a hurry, and since this is the fourth pass through the climb to the tunnel, we stop for very few photos. It’s a beautiful ride, climbing through a gap in the Pollino Range and dropping into southern Basilicata, but we really don’t have time to stop. We do well to arrive at the pharmacy at ten to one, just in time before it closes until late afternoon.

But the pharmacy doesn’t exist. It’s on Google Maps, but it’s a pharmacy phantasy. There’s an actual one up in the center of Viggianello, but there isn’t time to make it up to that one. Instead, we resign ourselves to the realities of the situation and just stop in at the Happy Hour bar and warm up over a pair of sandwiches.

A bit later we check in at our B&B. It’s run by a family, a couple and two young boys that live in the house also. They don’t speak English (which we’re finding to be the norm here), so Rachael uses the translator to describe the finger situation and ask for suggestions. Mom gives the inflamed finger the eye, leaves and then returns with a better pair of tweezers than we carry. She succeeds in removing most of it, and Rachael’s finger immediately seems improved.

The flags are out this morning as we leave Morano Calabro. Their annual festa is coming up, to celebrate a great victory over the Saracens over a thousand years ago.

I mentioned that it’s a seventeen hundred foot climb to the tunnel, I think. First though, we have to drop a few hundred feet from Morano Calabro.

So I’ve behaved myself and done well at biking up the climb without stopping, so I can afford to brake for one last photo of the Pollino Range backdropped by an interesting laminar sky. The snow is disappearing fast.

At the high point of our short ride and what I assume is the border between Calabria and Basilicata.

It’s a sharp, fast drop from the ridge, all the way to Rotonda. After that it’s a bit lumpy the rest of the way, and windy and cold. It’s slower going than we expected, and we barely make it to the nonexistent pharmacy before it would have closed, if it had existed in the first place.

Dropping toward Rotonda, which is just around the corner. I was sorry there wasn’t time to stop for a photo of Rotonda, an interesting-looking If we had stopped, we might have looked around and noticed that the town has a pharmacy. Dumb.

Happy to have at least found a place for lunch, at the Happy Hour.

So that was the ride, such as it was. We checked in to our room about 2, Rachael’s finger recieved some welcome first aid, and then she immediately crashed for about two hours - she’s pretty exhausted, and quite chilled from the ride.

When she comes to she’s feeling much better, and we walk up to Viggianello (our room is in a residential area beneath the town). It’s small, but fascinating. Built into the side of a steep hill, most of the village is really only accessible by foot because the avenues are all too narrow for a car, or involve stairs. Some of the walkways feel almost too narrow for even a person.

We spend a couple of hours in our look-around, walking three or four miles and climbing up and down about a thousand vertical feet of steep lanes and stairs. Along the way, we chance upon our host out on the central plaza with his two sons. We discuss restaurants with him. There’s only one in the village, and it’s pretty simple. He tells us of a really good one at a masseria out of town a ways, and generously offers to drive us there. We arrange to meet at 7:30 back at the inn.

7:30 comes around, and plans change. The restaurant he had in mind for us is closed today, as it turns out. Instead, he offers to drive us back up to the restaurant in the village. We eat there, and enjoy a decent meal: homemade pasta with wild mushrooms, a mixed salad, and grilled veal. For dessert we decide to try Tartufo di Pizzo, an ice cream treat from Pizzo, the coastal town we biked through a few days back on our ride to Amantea. It’s delicious, and a surprise because it has a couple of other flavors embedded inside a roll of vanilla.

We’re glad dinner worked out as it did, because we really enjoyed our walk back down through the town after dark. A small, mysterious place, there’s just enough here for a fine one night stand.