Sentiero degli Dei (Pathway of the Gods)

In legend, the gods came down to this pathway to reach the sea on the Amalfi coast.  The Sirens would sing their beautiful songs to lure sailors to come near.  But the Sirens resided beyond impassable reefs and the sailors would shipwreck.  Ulysses was warned about the Siren’s songs while on his journey, so he ordered his crew to fill their ears with beeswax so they would not hear the songs.  He also instructed his crew to strap him to the mast so that he could hear the songs of the Sirens but not sail toward them.

We took the bus to Amalfi and then had to get another bus up the mountain to Bomerano.  We had 45 minutes to wait so we had a cappuccino and found out where the bus stop was.  We did not have a clue as to where to get off the bus as there are no town signs, it is all one area called Agerola.  Having been tipped off by our hiking book, I wrote out, in Italian, a note for the driver to let us know when we reached the correct stop.  Sure enough, when we got to Bomerano, he yelled out Bomerano!  We got off and another two people got off, who happened to be Australians who were planning on the same walk as we were.  I asked them if they knew where to get off and they said no, so I don’t know how they planned to get off at the proper bus stop.

We headed off on the ‘Pathway of the Gods’ from Bomerano to Positano.  It was a really easy hike and only took us about 3 hours.  There were a couple of options to get from a town high in the mountains down to Positano which is a seaside resort, well, a stacked up the mountain resort.  We opted out of the path with 1,700 steps straight down the mountain and opted for a walk to the next mountain town which cut out some steps, although there were enough steps to negotiate.  We are getting legs like the locals though, and everything is very easy now.

When we got to Positano, we dropped into a shop to buy bus tickets back to Salerno, this would involve a bus change in Amalfi.  The shopkeeper said the bus to Amalfi was closed, I thought we were having a communication break-down so was showing him my bus schedule and he kept saying it was closed.  Then a couple of Americans came in and said that they were just told the road was closed due to a landslide.  We had to take the bus all the way to Sorrento, which is in the opposite direction and we knew there was no bus from Sorrento to Salerno and would have to take a couple of trains.

A large group of us waited for the bus which was very late.  It did arrive and we were off to Sorrento.  We only had a cup of tea for breakfast and a cappuccino in Amalfi and never did get a chance to eat our lunch so were starving.  When we got to Sorrento, we headed to the Tabacchi shop and got train tickets to Pompeii, then we immediately caught the train.  When we arrived in Pompeii, we had to walk to a different train station on the Salerno line to get back to Salerno.  Luckily we knew everything since we have figured out the train/bus system and since we had already been to Pompeii, we knew which direction the Salerno line was, so we walked over there and got tickets and caught the next train.  Our timing worked out perfectly and we got back to Salerno.

We googled the road closure and found out the landslide happened on Monday!  There were other foreigners on the hike going in the opposite direction and they would have experienced the same problem only they would have been in Amalfi, with no way of getting back without taking some bizarre route like we did.

Hut in the Hills

Praiano, note the awesome hairpin turns near the bottom of the pic.

Amalfi Coast

Town of Nocelle up top, Positano below, both were our destinations

Positano

Amalfi Coast and Nocelle

Pertuso or pierced, giant hole in the rock above Monte Pertuso

No!  More steps.  These were down, thankfully.

Positano, a very pretty town.