Saturday, July 7, 2012

Hiking Mt. Vesuvius

One of the most rewarding ways to see Italy was climbing Mt. Vesuvius. Looking up from Pompeii, Mt. Vesuvius was daunting and dangerous, but climbing up it's dusty facade, the mountain seems quiet and calm, with a spectacular view!
Starting around 9am or so, Hope, Alejandro, and Andrew and I began our trek up the winding path. When I think of hiking, I always picture luscious trees full of animal life and cool breezes whistling through branches of shade. The scenery of a ecosystem of a volcano is the complete opposite. The sun blazing down our necks in the arid, dirty environment surrounded by hardened molten lava rock took its toll as we passed each checkpoint. As sweat poured down my back (gross, I know) the only saving grace of the venture was the top. I have never really been all the way to the top of a volcano, but on top of the tallest mountain in the area, I could see all of Naples, the cities surrounding it, and even as far out as the island of Capri just off shore of Sorrento.

At the top, the 4 UVA kids obviously had to take a few pictures in tribute to Jefferson (my blog would not be complete without a few references to him). Having been trapped on a ship for 10 days, we also needed to stretch our legs, so we took off climbing up the molten rock, only to discover that inside the crater of the volcano was the discovery channel filming some documentary on the "inactivity" of Vesuvius. We tried to see if we could get into a few shots, you know, to make the series more interesting, but we were quickly ushered away.

The way down Vesuvius was almost as much of a work out as the way up- which frankly I needed... the amount of pasta and pizza I have been eating in Italy, I probably was sweating Italian food. Still, the downward slope was a welcomed change and though I loved the view I was happy to be heading back to the harbor area. I think sailing on a ship gives me some weird sense of longing for the sea now, because when I see water I get so excited.

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