The Amalfi Coast: Day 2 – Malacoccolal

Our hike today was in the vicinity of the Sant Agata Dei Due Golfi where we had great views of both the Gulf of Naples and the Gulf of Salerno. We did the 7K, easy to moderate walk,with a steep descent from Malacoccola and climbed the equivalent of 52 floors, based on Ross’ GPS. Most of that climbing was done on rocky steps, some civilized and some “uncivilized.” We quickly learned to appreciate the value of using two hiking poles instead of just one.

Maybe we should have known what was ahead when the guides had us warm up with some stretching exercises.

But our trek started out innocently enough, padding along a gentle Le Tore forest path on the ridge of the Monti Lattari range.

Checking out grapevines and fig trees as we walked along.

We stopped to feed an apple to a nice St. Andrew’s donkey.

After descending to Colli di Fontanelle, our path changed direction, which was our guides’ euphemism for “starts to climb.”

And then we climbed some more.

But as promised, we had wonderful views of the Gulf of Salerno, including these small islands where the mythical sirens of Homer’s Odyssey resided.

Then we started the more technical rocky descent. This was definitely “uncivilized.” Double-focus as we had to watch the placement of each foot.

At this point we are getting close to the runout and my tired legs are quivering.

At the bottom we looked back from where we started the descent.

Heading toward our lunch site, we passed many olive trees with rolled up netting used to harvest the ripe olives.

We also met a nice local lady who was on the way to pick tomatoes from her garden.

Then we arrived at the Agriturismo Fattoria Terrnova for lunch.

Lunch was superb; a variety of fresh vegetable dishes and cheeses including eggplant, green beans, tomatoes, potatoes, mozzarella, and a fried item similar to our hush puppies and water, and wine.

The walk before lunch was about 4 1/2 miles on rough terrain and left me exhausted (plus still jet lagged) and I took the van back to our hotel. There we checked out the gardens including the pumpkin arbor.