Warning: This post is not suited for the faint of heart or those that do not handle graphic photos.
The weekend of April 9th through 11th, we knew we didn’t want to stay in Rome, but didn’t have a destination in mind. A couple of our friends had rented cars over spring break and I had already driven, so we thought we would get a car and go somewhere. That was a our plan until Friday at 3:30, when we had all packed up and walked to the car. I had sort of layed out two options, Abruzzo, or Gulf of Gaeta. Abruzzo, the region to the east of Lazio (Roma is the capital of this region and country), is known for its wine, mainly Montalpuciano d’Abruzzo, and its mountainous terrain. We (and by we, I mean 3 out of 4 of us) also knew that we didn’t want to rent a hostel, this was going to be a bootstrap weekend, where cash was spent at bear minimum. Andrea had suggested that we go down the coast towards the bottom of Lazio and go to a couple of the beaches around Gaeta. Trusting Andrea’s opinion ever since his advice for my spring break, we ended up choosing this option.
We walked to Volpetti’s, where we each ordered two panini and a bottle of wine. For the normal customer, it would have cost 22 euro; for me, I only parted with two tickets with my name on them (thank God our program has discounts here). With our sandwiches and vino, we were on our way. It took us a while to find the correct road out of the city since we were working with only maps that were given to us at the rental car shop. But once there, it was easy driving; we made one bad mistake about half way through and got off the freeway into the small town of Terracina. We eventually figured it out and were back on the highway about 15 minutes later. Now we had rented the bottom end car, but they had given us a beauty (for European standards); our macchina was a Fiat Punto. The Panda I rented with the ‘rents had nothing on this; in a quarter mile race, the Punto would be finished as the Panda had just got in gear. For a majority of the journey, I was going about 130 to 140 km/hr, and still hadn’t maxed out (not something I can claim with the Panda). In a long tunnel, I gave it a little test. With all the windows down, a Daft Punk song blaring on the radio (we had made road trip cds), and silence amongst us, we pressed on. We were through first, then second, then third, fourth went quick, and finally through fifth. As I jumped into 6th gear we were reaching 175. I didn’t want to push much harder (even though the car had more to give) and backed off at 180. At 180, it took us half of a Daft Punk song (I’d say about 4 minutes) to get through the tunnel. When we were out on the other side, everyone had the same thing on their mind, “that was so freaking cool!” It was so simple, but for some reason, the loud music, blasting music, wind blowing, and no talking had all of us in another state of mind.
We then arrived in Sperlonga, where we turned into town to look for firewood and beers. Andrea had suggested this beach, because bonfires were allowed, but we didn’t bring any wood with us. It was nearing 11 at night, and nowhere was open to sell us any. So we MacGyver-ed it and scavenged the streets and dumpsters. I saw a dumpster full of cardboard and we grabbed some of that. Jamie hopped over a fence and collected as much wood as we could get (about eight dead tree branches, five 2x4’s, and a handful of kindling). The makeshift fire materials were shoved in the car and then we searched for L’Ultima Spiaggia, the last beach, which Andrea had suggested. It was too dark, and we couldn’t find it. We drove to Gaeta (the next town) and I stopped into a hotel to ask for directions and a map of the area. He pointed it out on the map, but again no luck. The coastline between the two towns is made up of tall cliffs, very similar to Big Sur (beaches not as nice) and dominated by resorts. All of these resorts were closed due to the time of year, but we drove down one anyways to see if it was a beach we could sleep on. It was very creepy and eerie; when we got to the bottom (about 30 switchbacks later in the car) we instantly turned around and got out of there as fast as we could. It was dark with only tiny roadside lights illuminating the road and buildings; I swear the boogieman was going to jump out any second.
We took a shot at another resort, but this one had a chain over the entrance. Sine we knew, or thought, that these were all deserted; we collected our gear and firewood with every intention of sleeping on the beach here. We got to the bottom; it was just as scary. This was the scene in that cheesy horror movie right before something bad happens, where you always ask yourself, “How could they be so stupid?” or, “Are you kidding me, I would never do that.” Well we did, this establishment was a restaurant; obviously closed down for now and we searched the premises for foreign life forms (there was a raper van in the bottom parking lot) and a place to lay down. We located the beach, about a 6 ft wide strip of sand separated us from the water. I knew instantly that the tide would cover us in water if we slept there and said no way; they thought it was fine. At this point, I think Jake and Dan-O were 100% set on sleeping there, Jamie about 80%, and me about 60. I said let’s check around the corner of the restaurant, because if I’m sleeping here, I want to make sure no one else is down here. We walked, holding my pocket maglite in front, when all of a sudden it wasn’t the only visible light. Straight in front of us was a small house with a light on in the living room. Trying to stay calm, but my heart had other intentions, we backed away with our light covered and without a sound. We grabbed everything and quickly trekked our supplies back up the cliffside to the car. My heart was pumping, adrenaline was in full effect, and my face was flushed.
We eventually settled on a strip of beach that was not off a cliffside, but right next to the road. We parked, unloaded, and set up camp. Two fishermen were out, with about five lines each lined up on the beach. I found it interesting that they can tell if they have a bite, since they aren’t manning each pull all the time, by a dip in the glow in the dark gel that they put at the top of the rods. We went over and said hi and told them we would be sleeping here (stupid decision in my opinion) and then kept to ourselves.
Surprisingly, we did get the fire going sans lighter fluid and only a lighter and cardboard (in our hurried retreat, we had lost the bag of kindling). Soon enough we were warm (I was) and the wine and beers were empty.
I had prepared well for this trip (thank you Grandma and Grandpa for the Swiss army knife) and brought a thin fleece sleeping bag, beanie, and two jackets. Jamie and Dan-O had brought their blankets off their beds from the convent. Jake, on the other hand, was completely unprepared.
From left to right: my stuff, Jamie, Jake, and Dan
He had jumped onto the trip and just assumed that everything would be taken care of for him. He had no idea we had an intention to sleep on the beach and didn’t even have a thick jacket. To be honest, I didn’t talk to him about the trip until he came with Jamie and Dan-O when we loaded up the car and left.
After some solid conversations about the usual: home, girls, and “what the hell am I going to do when I graduate in a year?” I fell asleep beneath the stars with the fire to my left. Apparently, Jake asked for the keys while I was asleep and I gave them to him. He was freezing and thought that the car would be warmer if he needed to go there. For me, that was all I remember. I didn’t rise until the sun slapped me in the face at 7:30. For the others, the night was only entering its second act.
When I woke up to the glaring sun and blazing heat (temperatures fluctuated tremendously) I was alone. The last moment I remember, we were all asleep in a square, head to foot to head to foot… with the fire in the center. Now, at 7:30, no one was to be found, well at least in my party. Fishermen were still fishing, and people were taking morning walk along the beach. Oh what a sight I must have been to them, empty bottles of booze scattering my surroundings with an ashy fire near my tightly wrapped up prepared for snow self.
And my thoughts, Where was everyone? Had they been killed like we had all thought could have happened that night? Did they drive home? What the hell is going on? Should I look for them? Or just go back to sleep? I wobbled over across the street to the car, avoiding the stares from the walkers and fishermen, and opened the door. There they were, all 3 of them sitting up in their respective seats in an exhausted state of sleep. I hopped in to the sand filled car (it literally was just as sandy as the beach) and tried to fall back into sleep until they all woke up.
It was only about 30 minutes before they woke up and Jamie and I returned to the beach to sleep there. I asked what the hell happened? Why was I the only one on the beach when I woke up? Jamie answered that he woke up at about 4:30, when he looked around, he and I were the only ones left outside. He didn’t know if he should wake me up and tell me he was going to the car and made a futile effort, deciding on, “Let a sleeping dog lay.” I said alright, I would have done the same thing, if I had woken up and felt as cold as he described it (who says a tenderfoot in boy scouts isn’t worth anything? I was prepared). About an hour later Dan-O and Jake surfaced. Jake perturbed by his miserable almost sleepless night, and Dan with a limp.
It was a painful limp, one that didn’t look like a sore ankle, and by golly I wish it had been a rolled ankle. The story went a little something like this, re-imagined from Jake’s perspective:
“So we were all talking, and all of sudden, you were out. You went to sleep and we were all jealous. I was freezing and wanted to go sleep in the car, but you said in like sleep, that it would be safer if I stayed here with everyone (still agree with that statement). So I tried to fall asleep on the beach and was almost asleep, when Dan-O got up and stumbled on top of me. I thought he was sleep walking, and I told him to get off me. He staggered some more and took one errant step when he planted his left foot in our bonfire. He was screaming and yelling from the pain and fell over after that. I told him to go wash it off in the ocean, but he refused. About an hour later, he finally got up and hobbled over to the ocean to wash his foot off. He fell over into the cold water; simultaneously from the pain, he had a bowl movement (not going to go into detail here). When he got back to where we were, his teeth were chattering and he was soaked to death. He and I walked to the car and tried sleeping there from then on. In the car, he was moaning from the throbbing pain, but we both fell asleep for a little bit. Then you came in and woke us up when it was lit out.”
And that was the night, I slept cold through it all, Jake didn’t sleep a wink, Jamie a fair amount, and Dan-O stepped in the fire. He didn’t even remember it in the morning until he put pressure on it. It was a disgusting sight; blistery with pockets of puss white and red in color covering half of the bottom of his foot and part of the side of it.
We found his sock on the beach, which had been burned completely through. He could put zero pressure on it, but he thought he was fine to go through the day like nothing happened. I was the first to throw up protest, saying this thing is going to get infected, you can’t walk, and we are sleeping outside, you need to get this checked out at a hospital. Jake argued that he would be fine (He hadn’t woken Jamie or I up when it happened, so he obviously felt that way from the beginning) and discouraged our idea of taking him to get it checked out. Dan-O thought if he just wrapped it in toilet paper, he would be fine; BEEP, wrong answer. We settled on the pharmacy and once we had collected our belongings I drove us into Gaeta to search for an open one. But it was Saturday meaning none were open. Finally through searing pain, Dan-O agreed on the hospital idea and I drove there as quickly as possible relieved that he had come to the right decision. Dan-O’s protest came from financial reasons; we are all feeling the bank account woes, and none of us want to separate with our cash when unnecessary. In my opinion, this counted as a pertinent expense.
We sat for a while without finding anyone to talk to. I brought in my (parent’s) pocket size Italian dictionary to translate words we didn’t know such as fire, burn, blister, and amputate (fuoco, bruciatura, pustola, amputare). Finally we found someone to talk to, he had us fill out a slip of paper with the normal questions of name, age, injury, marital status, allergies…while he glanced at his foot to check how dire the situation was going to be. Apparently it was not an emergency because we sat for another hour and a half before his name was called (the place was empty, so not like a US Hospital emergency room where you sit for a couple hours regardless).
Before he was called in, my dad had called me to see where I was and funny enough, how come I hadn’t updated the blog. At 4:30 PST, I was standing outside a hospital in Gaeta, Lazio, Italy, taking my friend to clean up his burn. To say the least, I think my initial response of, “I’m at the hospital” shocked him slightly. I then told him my involvement in the story and asked what they would do to his foot. Dr. Dad said that it was a good thing that his foot hurt him because that means the nerve endings are still alive and it is only a 2nd degree burn. Although he wasn’t sure, he believed that they probably wouldn’t pop the blisters and would just clean and wrap the foot.
About fifteen minutes later, we had moved onto Master’s talk, Jamie, Jake and Dan-O hurried out of the hospital and told me we needed to go. Confused I asked what was going on and got in the car. They answered, “We haven’t paid for anything, they didn’t ask for money, we gotta get out of here.” I put the phone down and turned around and started reversing out of the parking lot, when WHAM! We came to a lurching stop. Directly behind the left corner of the bumper was a 8 inch dent about as wide as the pole that that held the hospital’s covered entrance up. The parking lot was on the other side of this covered awning and the entrance was in between one of the poles and a retaining wall. Well, I hit the pole, maneuvered around it and kept moving on our exit. If I thought the morale in the car was at bottom, it now it rock bottom. Skipping out on one bill (which wasn’t skipping out, emergency rooms are free) saved one expense, crashing the car added a whole other tremendous expense.
We drove back to a roadside deli to get lunch and assess the situation from there. Gaeta and the surrounding region is the pinnacle spot for buffalo mozzarella. It supplies most, if not all, of the Rome’s and a majority of Italy’s. We split two Caprese, which had the single largest piece of mozzarella I’ve ever seen and each had our own prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich, I’m sure we each had a pound of the cheese/salty morsels each. Still pissed off but now full, we decided to check out the beach Andrea talked about and found it,
L’Ultima Spiaggia or Trecento Scalini (300 steps). And 300 it was, they curved as switch backs, taking us (minus Dan-O who was in the car) deeper down the cliffside to a peaceful little beach that would have made a great camping spot.
The beach was peaceful, turns out a predominately gay beach, but at this time of year pretty empty. There was one family who had made the hike to have a picnic lunch and an afternoon outside. Like most of the beaches here, there was a snack shack at the bottom with a few people working on getting it set up for the summer. We stood on some rocks that touched the ocean and watched 2 men shovel sand from the water onto rocks looking for bait.
We decided to drive further down the coast, taking a driving tour of the vicinity so that we could all enjoy it. Our drive took us south towards Napoli for about 40 km. The mountains rose quickly to our left and ended at waterfront to our right. They were grayish in color with dots of green from the trees, an overall barren landscape.
When we decided to turn back, I found a firewood yard and we stopped. The guy, who spoke zero English, usually sold his wood in pallets for 150 euros. These pallets would get you through the winter; we needed only one night’s worth. We took every bag that we had out of the trunk and filled the trunk to the brim with oak, pine, and kindling. It was a sizeable amount of firewood and we only separated with 15 euros. Our luggage had to be shoved in the back and the car was getting very full.
We then returned to Gaeta to the markets to collect dinner and camping supplies. We asked a shop owner where we could buy a blanket; his answer, Formia. We drove 20 km back from where we had just came and searched for a
comperta there. It took a good 20 minutes to find a store that sold blankets and when there, Dan-O said he would sleep in the car and that Jake could borrow his blanket (another 40 minutes of daylight squandered). Back in Gaeta, we scavenged the town for dinner; at the Macelleria (butcher) we bought sausage and bistecca, at the Delicatessen, we bought tinfoil (to cover our rusted grill that Jamie found on the hillside climb up L’Ultima Spiaggia), aluminum hotel pans. The market gave us mozzarella di bufala, pane, peperoni, alio, sale, pepe, cipolle, patatine, burro e olio (buffalo mozzarella, bread, bell peppers, salt, pepper, garlic, onions, potatoes, butter and olive oil). Not to mention the necessary liquid components of wine and beer. Now the car more stuffed, we returned to our beach campsite.
The sunlight was fading; we needed to get the fire going quickly and the vegetables cleaned and chopped. I set up a makeshift table on our firewood with my pillow (towel) spread out over it. As a side dish, I made a vegetable stew of potatoes, onions, peppers, seasoned with garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil, and a hint of peroni beer. I took a head of garlic, added salt, pepper, and oil, wrapped it in tinfoil and through it in the fire to make roasted garlic, same thing with an onion and a few potatoes.
The steak marinated in onions, garlic, and beer, while the other dishes cooked. After the fire was really roaring, we flattened an edge and added the tinfoil wrapped grill pan. On it went the sausages and bread went on the tinfoil wrapped stew to crisp up. Once flipped, mozzarella was added to the bread, which melted to create a bed for the sausage.
If you look closely at the left picture, it shows the shiny tinfoil. I included it, because as you can see, the flash kills the fames
We devoured our
bruschetta di salsice e mozzarella al fuoco (toasted bread with sausage and mozzarella made in the fire). The stew as then turned so both ends had equal time in the heart of the fire and to refresh the coals heating it from underneath. Dan-O begged to open it up and dig in, but I told him to be patient. I took out the garlic and onion and that was gone within minutes.
The edges were slightly burnt because the tinfoil is much thinner over here, but the taste was remarkable. The garlic was sweet and creamy, while the onion had caramelized and melted on the tongue. The stew came out next as I put on the steak. Not to brag, but I’ve never had a more delicate collection of potatoes, onions, and peppers. Each had a creamy fall apart texture, but still retained some of their integrity. We sat like fiends with our fix in the center and attacked with forks.
It was gone within minutes, by the time you closed your mouth with one bite you had a forkful waiting to gain entrance. Per secundo, we had the steak. It was difficult to maintain a consistent temperature and some parts came out more tough than others. Also, plastic knives are essentially useless.
It was an amazing barbaric meal that reminded me much of home. It made me miss camping, using the outdoors, and most of all the beach. It didn’t seem like Italy, it seemed like a weekend trip down Highway 1 (except for the burned foot and crashed car part). Full, satisfied, and lethargic, the rest of the evening was spent drinking and going through the day and what lay ahead for tomorrow.
Again, I pretty much slept through the entire night, except this time I woke up a few times (unintentionally) and stoked the fire. I checked the clock once and it was nearly 5 in the morning. It wasn't quite light out, but it was starting to lighten up and the fishermen were back at work. While I was up doing the work, Jamie was obviously peacefully asleep.
The next morning, we all knew what lay ahead. The events played out pretty close to what we had expected until we got to Rome. Instead of taking the fast road back, we drove the Appian Way, the ancient road that coined the phrase, "All roads lead to Rome." It was cool to drive through the farmland and the pine tree lined roads. It had a mystic feel to it and it numbed the pain of our expected future altercation with Europcar.
It did take us a little longer to get back. The trip in total took about 3+ hours to get the car back to the convent. Part of that issue, was going through the settlements that have depended on the traffic coming through the Appian Way for centuries. It was a Sunday and these towns' piazzas were crowded with every local conversing with one another and enjoying the early afternoon.
At the convent, we emptied all of our gear and checked our bank accounts. Collectively, we had about 3,000 US Dollars (the money supposed to last the length of the program) to pay for this car. With heads held low, we drove to the gas station at the bottom of the hill to fill up and address the sand issue in the car. I wish I had taken a picture, because it is the sandiest car that I've ever seen in my life. I paid for the gas making a peace jester for crashing the car and then grabbed the air hose to spray the car. It took a solid 20 minutes to make a dent on the car. We couldn't get all of the sand out, but the air blower had worked and it looked somewhat reasonable.
20 minutes later, with an ever growing pit in our stomachs we were parked outside the rental car's office. We had discussed our tactics on the drive over, "Do we tell him at first?", "Do we try and hide it?", "Do we say someone hit us?". My answer was no to all of them. I wasn't going to point it out to him, but I wasn't going to lie about it. We turned in the keys and he said, "Where's the car?" We answered right outside and gulped. He got in the drivers seat, reversed the car and parked it on the opposite side of the street. He got out and took a long time to turn around to look at the car. So long, that his back was to the left corner of the bumper as he turned. He didn't start to inspect the car for damage until the right half of the back of the car and he continued moving to his right. He finished by walking up to the passenger seat and said ok lets settle the paperwork. Now at this point, we weren't going to give him two chances to find it. So Jake maneuvered in front of the dent as he walked back towards the office in case he had any errant glances.
Back inside the office, he found our file and told us that we would be getting money back because we didn't use the car for three days; we had just returned it in time to only have it for two days instead of the three that we had paid for. Our receipt came out and on the damage spot, it read NO DAMAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Jake had to walk out of the store to not blow it, Jamie had to stand back, Dan-O was struggling to contain his composure, and I was trying to hold it together. I asked a couple follow up questions about the deposit and what not and he said we were all settled. Needless to say, we turned the corner and ran. Jamie jumped in the air and did a leg kick. We were on cloud 9; no not cloud 9, cloud 9,000. We were walking aimlessly near Barberini and had no where in mind. We were so happy not spending our savings on this stupid accident, we even considered taking a carriage ride the 10 miles home. The thoughts that we talked about that had gone through our heads were insane. At one point on Saturday night, Jamie asked, "What if he just doesn't see it?" Jake answered very negatively, "There is no fucking way that you can miss something like that." Dan-o, who had the car under his name, thought that this was going to affect his insurance in the US. I just felt like an idiot and ashamed. The thought even came out, that if we just kept the car and said it was stolen, we would only have to pay 1,700 euros; at least that way, Jamie and I would have a car for our summer trip... When we got to the shop, we were praying for a car to come flying down the road and run into and completely destroy that cursed Fiat Punto.
I don't know how the events unfolded that way; it was the craziest weekend of my life, with so many ups and downs. We summed it up to people with the creatively shocking response to, "How was your weekend?" with "Oh well, we crashed the car after we got Dan-O out of the hospital." That got them on their toes for the rest of the story. I won't say that I would like to repeat that weekend ever again, but I will be telling that story for the next 50 years. So now to let you in on the secret and to hurt my pride slightly. The car.....
