Day 10: San Ferdinando - Marinella

I wish very much to write specially for this day. We woke up at 7, and then I wanted to stay one more day, or to pass the next mountain by train. Right away the first decision was wrong and from there everything went wrong. In this text we will not tell the sex of the person who did certain deed so you haven’t/couldn’t choose sides.

So, after we decided to go shorter way, which was made of rocks, narrow, very steep, both of our bikes were carried to the top because there wasn’t any chance for us to push them. While one of us was carrying bikes up there, the other was used as a food to mosquitoes for whole one hour. That’s all about the shorter way. Finally we saw asphalt, but we were already wet from carrying bikes. Left road was leading downhill to the train station which one of us wished for, and the right way was leading up into the hills. We went right. So we were climbing, and climbing and there was no end and the knee was hurting and clicking. And when there was downhill we were going 10 km/h. Disaster. We don’t know should we laugh or cry.

In the last few days our center for terrain hilliness was very disturbed, so we treated uphill as a flat and the flat like downhill. And we came to conclusion that we should have bring vaser balance.

And then we climbed to the old place called Nicotera and, I don’t know why, we took a look at the map and realize that that road is no good. We should have gone towards the place called Vibo Valentina. Through whole Italy there is something we call orange road, and that is road that goes closer the coast than the highway. It has lower speed limit and it is less busy. Well, that’s the place when we realized we aren’t on the orange way. We started to go downhill and soon we saw start point of this trip. Because one of us was very angry and angrily rushed downhill, the other one hoped that we are descending because we will finally go by train (when we have already missed the road, lost two hours and knee hurts). However we started to climb infinitely again, when on one of our bikes tire burst. That was in the afternoon. Now, everything that is happening could start with LUCKILY.

Luckily near was backyard of polite Italians. While one of us wanted to repair the tire, the other one wanted to change it. Repairing didn’t help and half an hour passed seamlessly. We managed to put spare tire somehow, inflate it a little bit with pump and a little bit with Mr. Italian’s compressor. While “boys” were inflating the tire, I talked to the Mrs. Thanks to God I talked on little French and Spanish I know so I understud her more or less. We were on our way by one hour. To be more exact, 20 meters away. One of us didn’t like how much tire was inflated, so it was requested to stop and to inflate it properly. On that point the valve jammed in pump and after that it broke. Then the pump was thrown into the field because of anger. The wheel was removed (rear one this time) and brought back to the Mr. with the compressor. We spent spare tires.

I stayed to watch on the bikes. Two bicyclists gone by, Czech and Brazilian, they go to Rome from Palermo. They asked if everything is OK, I said - never better. One car stopped to ask the same question. They added that we shouldn’t go to the Vibo Valentini because it is too far..

A little bit later Momcilo came back with the wheel. We put it on the place. We started at three o clock (TWO HOURS LATER). We moved 26km for 6 hours. It was out of mind to think that we can arrive anywhere. It needed so little for me to stop any truck, to load bikes and us and to tell him to drive anywhere he wants. We bought cheese on some gas station, we sat in front of it and eat it. It was uphill again and we were counting curves on the road until the end. We were pushing our bikes, guessing car brands and finally we came to the top of all tops.

We were stroked so much with all that happened that we were pushing our bikes downhill. Every day I forgot that we must descend if we were climbing. And that part is something priceless, unbelievable prize. Kilometers and kilometers of 40 km/h of downhill, beautiful new road and then we saw the sea. Soon we found the camp where we wanted to sleep. On the beautiful rocky beach, one camp village where the host was loveable diver. He said - give how much you want. Another evening when we looked the sunset from the sea.