In the spring, when I spoke with Italians about my plans for the six months of walking, up and down across the peninsula, the responses were nearly all encouraging, enthusiastic, and constructive. But there was one message that slipped through that was more concerning. Watch out for the people in Calabria, several said. All of them in the north, it should be acknowledged. You can’t trust the Calabrians.
Every country, of course, inculcates its own internal prejudices, stereotypes, and divisions. If a European told a Portlander about their plans to walk through California, as opposed to say Texas, Arkansas, or Florida, they would receive wildly different responses, and I imagine they would hear some unflattering things about at least some of the people in some of those last three states. And maybe the first one, to boot! We’re quite skilled at finding fault with our own, and these days we don’t have to look very hard.
And I realize that I’m not seeing all of Calabria. Where Naples has its Camorra mafia and Sicily its Cosa Nostra, Calabria has the ‘Ndrangheta. Its tendrils reach everywhere, into every aspect of Calabrian life. While those might be more tangible in the larger coastal cities, most of which I’m missing, its approach to money laundering has seen it infiltrate every sector of the economy, urban and rural, across the region–and all five continents.
On a day to day level, though, that’s practically all invisible to me. “Everyone wants to talk about the mafia,” one of my hosts bemoaned, “but the mafia isn’t drugs. It’s the terrible road leading here. I keep asking to have it fixed, repaired. They do nothing. Do you see the beautiful river behind here? I had to clean it myself, picking up all of the garbage. There’s a small group of luminaries in the city who get whatever they want. For the rest of us, though? Nothing. Because the mafia controls the government.”
What is eminently visible to me are the Calabrians themselves, who have gone above and beyond to make me feel more welcome here than in any other part of Italy.
Leaving Cerviolo, I strolled through a quiet pine forest, lined with yellowing ferns, interrupted only periodically by a series of clambering Pandas. Fiat Pandas, the 4×4 version of this classic vehicle that is shaped a little like a Geo Metro, and yet owns the Italian back country. It’s not the kind of vehicle that comes to an American’s mind when thinking about rugged travel on uneven dirt tracks, but for the farmers, hunters, and truffle-diggers of Italy, there’s seemingly no better choice.
A few hours later, I finally reemerged into civilization. The town of Bocchigliero sits splayed out along a steep hillside. Whereas most towns seem to position themselves along a ridge, Bocchigliero plunges directly downhill, and at one point I grew concerned that I had already missed the center and its cafe. I asked an older woman and she encouraged me to continue–”keep going, straight, straight, straight!” As it happens, I had only made it halfway, and still had many more meters to drop before first coffee.
The bar was buzzing. A modern-day tinker sat outside, his cart replaced with an overstuffed bicycle, household goods somehow affixed at all angles, while a large church sat open above, overlooking the scene. A man familiar with the Cammino Basiliano introduced himself to me. Franco offered me some fire water and then talked through the next section. The problem, he explained, was that the trail was badly overgrown. His friend had recently sent him a bunch of pictures from his own failed attempt at walking through, and he showed me the jungly evidence. Better to take the road, he insisted. I grimaced. The road meant five extra kilometers, and also–you know–more road. But still, I wasn’t thrilled about the potential for plodding, bloody progress along a nasty footpath, so I agreed. He offered me his phone number, in case I got into any trouble, and the bartender–who had been listening in on the conversation–jumped in and complimented my Italian. She charged me much less for my breakfast than I had been expecting.
The provincial road was made entirely out of switchbacks, first plunging down Bocchigliero’s mountain and then climbing right back up Campana’s. What it lost in the charm of a footpath was replaced with some dramatic views of the coast, as I continue to wind along a trajectory that keeps the Ionian Sea in sight. At one point it also brought Rossano back into sight, a reminder that one thing the Cammino Basiliano is not is direct.
At one point, a Panda pulled up alongside me, a woman rolling down the window and offering me a ride. I explained what I was doing and she almost started bouncing up and down with enthusiasm, offering me compliments and a wave before continuing down the road.
Campana is a curious town. It looks a little like a film set, trying to capture a nearly-abandoned western outpost, the buildings all faded or peeled paint, many doors boarded up, almost nobody out walking around. It’s hard to believe that this was once ancient Kalasarna, founded by the Homeric hero Philoctetes. Just as I turned into town, a vicious wind started ripping through the empty streets, as dark clouds surged in overhead. I hustled into the first open bar I could find, just as rain started strafing the road outside. While the barista was initially reserved, after I sat down with my macchiato he came over to ask where I was from and what I was up to–with curiosity, not suspicion. I explained and he became excited, firing off a few more questions before catching himself, and encouraging me to enjoy the coffee and the rest. Later, when the rain stopped, I gathered up my stuff and prepared to leave, and he insisted that I let him make me a sandwich before leaving. On the house.
Google Maps is consistently inaccurate with opening times around here, though that might simply be a product of us swinging from summer to offseason hours. I stood outside the supermarket, which Google said was supposed to open at 4pm, but now a sign indicated 4:30pm, and I huddled behind a small metal barrier as the wind sliced down the main street. Dark clouds continued to threaten overhead, promising a miserable night of camping. Around 4:15, the clerk opened up, noting that he saw me outside and didn’t want me to have to wait any longer. As I was checking out, he asked me about my plans. I mentioned that I was camping and he looking pensive for a moment. “There are some megaliths up ahead, around three kilometers outside of town.” I knew about these and was already planning to visit. He continued, “there is a small grotto there. Not big, but big enough for you. It might work for the night.” I thanked him for the advice and pushed back out into the wind, leaning forward at a 45-degree angle, just as the rain returned. Fortunately, this was a brief appearance.
The megaliths that he mentioned are a pair of hulking stones that are perched on a hill overlooking Campana and the surrounding countryside. The more evocative of the two, in my view, is the Elephant of the Incavallicata. Standing 5.5 meters and relatively thin, its trunk and ears are almost immediately recognizable when faced head-on. The other, a taller (7.5 meters), rounder figure is sometimes called the Sitting Warrior, though more imagination is required. After admiring the two rocks, I scoped out the scene, and sure enough, a tidy cave was situated in the rock immediately beneath the Sitting Warrior. What could be more secure than having this quiet soldier maintaining his eternal vigil overhead? As the rain resumed, and the winds continued playing havoc with every unsecured object in the area, I snugly nestled in my cave and felt quite Basilian, for at least one evening.
The Cammino Basiliano is never direct, but the route the next day was positively bizarre. Over the first few hours, I followed a dirt track through oak woods. Very pleasant walking, for sure, but at one point the trail on the gps simply evaporated, so after scouting up and down the track, I just rolled with the dirt road, swinging wider than expected and ultimately finding my way back. More bizarre, though, was the route’s decision to then follow a provincial road out to the town of Perticaro, only to turn right back around and retrace those steps–a completely gratuitous round-trip of five kilometers. The idea, I think, is to visit Umbriatico, a cliff-top town after Perticaro, but that’s another ten kilometers round-trip, and even I have my limits.
Still, there was a bar in Perticaro, and I hadn’t had coffee yet. A woman was inside, drinking her own coffee, and she immediately asked me what I was up to. She was familiar with the Cammino Basiliano–she had actually met another walker, a Norwegian, about four weeks ago. She lived in my destination for the day and was excited to talk about the area, as she’s an expert on caves. And there’s a lot of caves in the area–not just the one I slept in last night, but a whole network of grotte rupestre beneath Verzino, and the many others scattered around that were so popular with Basilian hermits. In the middle of the conversation, the barista handed me a croissant without a word. He later refused to charge me for any of it.
Since I had already made the detour to Perticaro, I figured I should take a look around. Along the way, a garbage truck pulled up and the driver waved me over. He, too, was curious. I explained what I was doing and he declared, “You’re going the wrong way!” “Tell that to the people at the Cammino Basiliano,” I replied.
As late morning drew on, I navigated a few different closed fences, unwinding the wire ties and extricating the posts from the metal hoops in order to pass through, and then reassembling the dodgy structures. I made a small creek crossing, and then had one sustained ascent to Verzino. After a few long days, it was a delight to reach my destination shortly after noon, even with all the repetitive kilometers. I sipped a cappuccino and then plopped down in the piazza, waiting for my host to get back to me on Whatsapp. It took a while, but that was fine.
I knew nothing about where I was staying. An email address on the Cammino Basiliano site had led to a pair of phone numbers, one of which led to another phone number, which led to a response that was simply “35 euros.” OK, fair enough. This led to a different phone number to message when I arrived. My hosts eventually met me at the gas station in the center, as they returned from a day working in the fields, their trailer laden with the fruits of their labors. I followed them downhill a block, where they pulled over and introduced me to Nonna–one of their parents, though I couldn’t determine whose–who sat in a chair, draped in a blanket, next to the pellet heater. This was her house; they lived elsewhere in town. And I wasn’t just getting a room; I was staying in a complete flat upstairs, with a kitchen, washing machine, large living room, and three bedrooms. But that wasn’t enough. All of a sudden, my hosts started pushing food into my hands. A tupperware container filled with stewed peppers. A bag with several kinds of bread. A heel of cheese. The Nonna insisted that I take a bag of biscotti. A whole pomegranate appeared out of nowhere. I was about to leave when the wife told me to wait–more was coming. The husband returned with a large bag of something I’d never seen. It looked at first like nuts, but I learned these were giuggiole, or jujube in English. I thought those were just a kind of candy that got stuck in your teeth! In actuality, it’s a curious kind of fruit that tastes a little like apple.
Later that evening, I strolled over to the supermarket, not that I needed to buy much! At one point, I got a perfect view of Verzino’s panlitiche, or terraced caverns, where its ancient residents lived so many years ago. For a moment, it was like I was at the very beginning of this journey, on the Cammino Materano. One always feels the persistence of history in Italy, of course, but there’s something undeniably venerable about Homer, and to be walking through his era is especially powerful. By 500BC, this area was already well established, with iron, sulfur, and silver mines, as well as quarries for excavating alabaster.
Among other things, today the region is notable for hospitality. And every day, I feel like the biggest beneficiary of these welcoming people.
