I can see Africa from here!

I must say, our fieldtrips this weekend were much more extensive and interesting than our short trip to the agrotourismo last Saturday. We spent two entire days traveling, leaving in the morning and returning late for dinner, and saw so many things that I don’t think I can cover them all in one go. On Friday we went south, along beautiful coastline, to Leuca, the southern-most tip of the heel of Italy. On the way down the coast, we stopped in Santa Cesarea Terme, a little village perched on the cliffs next to the sea, with old stone stairways and parts of rooms leading out into thin air, the rest of their building in chunks further down, under water. We wandered around taking pictures for a while, then it was back into the bus. I could’ve ridden the bus down the coast forever. Everyone else slept or dozed (oh the horror of getting up at 8 a.m. on a Friday), but I stared out the window the entire time. The road never strayed out of sight of the sea, following every curve of the coast, climbing up the high cliffs and winding back down right to the sand of the shore, squeezing through little towns and edging around rocky fields and olive groves. We stopped again at a little gorge, Ciolo, and walked down to the water underneath the bridge. There were people snorkeling into a cave in the cliff- I wanted to join them so much. But we were back on the bus and onward down the coast. We went through many more towns perched on the cliffs, with little white houses lined up like lemmings, ready to plunge off the edge… I wonder how often a piece of cliff really does just give in and crumble away. Most of it is sandstone or limestone, not the most timeless of rocks.
When we finally reached Leuca, we were given two hours to roam or swim or sightsee on our own. While many of our group headed straight for the public beach, Kayla, Kelcey, Matt, and I decided we had to go to the exact southern-most tip of the heel. Just the town wasn’t good enough. We ventured off the road and down the coast, heading for what looked like the furthest out point, a rocky cliff jutting out towards Africa (or so we imagined). After scampering around many rocks, carefully avoiding cliff edges, and giving less than wide berths to the clearly fenced off private areas, we made it to the very tip-top. The view of the sea, and the coastline stretching out and back from us in both directions, was incredible. We had taken a full 15 or 20 seconds to enjoy the panorama when, upon turning inland, we realized there was a very large hole in the slope behind us. With child-like attention span, we abandoned the spectacular view to go investigate: the hole was even larger than it had looked, and appeared very easy to climb down into. It was also fenced off, but only with very rudimentary log fencing, really more just to keep people from falling into the hole accidentally, we decided. Therefore, we very purposefully climbed over the fence and down into the cave, which turned out to be a beautiful little grotto of sorts- there was another hole leading out the other side that let light in, and further down the cave opened up directly into the sea. The echoes of waves lapping into the cave were dampened by our excited squeals at having found such a place. We clambered down to the water and waded out a little, climbing on the rocks that had fallen from the ceiling of cliff still above us. The outlet to the sea was deemed to rocky and dangerous for any real swimming, so after exploring every corner we made our way back out of our cave, Kelcey and I climbing up to the higher window hole and out around the side of the cliff, Matt and Kayla going back the way we’d come in (toting our shoes and cameras for us). We all concluded that discovering and exploring a cave was far better than anything anyone else in our group could’ve done. On our way back up the coast, we found a not-quite-as-rocky cove to swim in, but didn’t stay long, as everyone but the Hawaiian among us (Kayla) was unnerved by how quickly the rocks ended and the water got deep. Just a dead leaf brushing your leg was enough to bring up thoughts of sharks or poisonous jellyfish, or the spear fishermen we’d seen suiting up earlier. After drying off, we found a short-cut to the road and made it back to the meeting point early enough to get gelato and lemon granita, and to put on our best “you’ll never guess where we’ve been” faces before the rest of our group returned for the ride back.