Vesuvius and Pompeii: calderas and ash

I guess it is pretty much official:  I have fallen behind.

My trip will be over in nine days (awful), and I have two more posts to go before even starting to tell you about Rome.  Hell, I turned 33 last week and all y'all don't even know about the awesome day I spent in the company of Keats and Shelley, nostalgia, Sicilian swordfish, and unexpected company of friends from Naples.  While I was in Rome I tried to catch up with doing a post a day, but that didn't work out quite like I intended, and now I am here in Greece, and still behind.

Athens is wonderful, btw.  I leave tomorrow for Santorini.  I'm going to be writing travel posts into the New Year.

Well, nothing to do but either press on or give up, and I am certainly not going to stop writing, so I will just have to rely on photos, my journal, and increasingly crappy memory to reconstruct a day from antiquity, back when I was still in Naples and I decided to do yet another splurge and sign up to go horseback riding on Mount Vesuvius.

I can't ride horses.  I've been on one a few times, distinctly of the "trail ride" variety.  And the last time I rode a horse, it was a pony.  His name was Sly and he was one sly stubborn little bitch.  It would be more accurate to say that "he deigned to take me around, at his own pace that-you-very-much" than to say "I rode him".

All the same, riding a horse on Mount Vesuvius just sounds way too cool to pass up.

It was a very Italian experience.  There were no helmets.  There was pretty much no instruction, other than "kick it to make it go".  Um, what about making it STOP???  They pretty much plunked us on horses and away we went up a volcano.  My horse's name was Diamond.

On the trail!

I'm not sure if this crossed your mind, because it rather didn't cross mine, but going up (and then down) a mountain does mean the horse will be either going up or downhill for much of the time.  The trail was at times pretty steep for me as a novice rider, but my horse had walked (and trotted, and cantered, and galloped!) this trail about a million times previous, and knew what to do.  We didn't get as far up the mountain as I had thought, but stopped at an overlook with a great view of of both the caldera and Naples down below.  (Naples is totally fucked if Vesuvius massively explodes again, btw.)

Horse-riding group, with Naples and the sea in the background.

Caldera

Proof of horse-related happenings.

 After all the photo ops, we headed back down again, a process I found much more nerve-wracking than going up!  The Italian trail guides kept yelling at us to "Wake them up!  Make them go!" and I was all "Dude.  This horse is picking his way down a steep mountain trail filled with roots, mud, and slippery rocks.  The human on his back has never done this before and you better believe he knows that.  I think I'll let him choose his own pace and as long as he doesn't outright stop, I think we'll be okay."

Once we got back to flatter ground, the Italians decided it was time for all us helmet-less novices to... gallop.

I did not terribly want to gallop, but I had no say in the matter.  The horse in front of mine started galloping and Diamond knew that This Is The Time On Vesuvius When We Gallop.  So he did, and thus so did I, flopping around on this poor guy's back, gripping the pommel so hard I got a bruise on my palm, and praying.

It was actually pretty fun.  We did it a few more times.

Also, riding a horse is hard.  My knees were killing me when I finally tumbled off, not to mention the muscles in my legs, abs, and lower back.  No wonder my sister has the flattest abs I've ever seen!

All in all, I would say this was a fantastic experience and a really excellent way to see Vesuvius.  Not cheap, but just like paragliding, when was I ever going to get the chance to ride a horse on a volcano again?  I was very happy I did it, especially with the no falling off and no dying.

After we said goodbye to our faithful steeds, the hostel folks drove us over to Pompeii and left us to our own devices.  I hooked up with a really nice couple from Canada I'd been on the ride with, Arity and Brian.  We were all starving so grabbed pizza and beer at a local cafe.  Pizza was good but not as good as in actual Naples. :)  As we finished up it started pouring.  Sadness.  We went right back into the same cafe and shared a bottle of wine.  By the time we finished the rain had stopped and the sun was coming out.  Lovely!

So, Pompeii is huge.  Who knew, it being a city and all.  I guess I really didn't know what all I'd be seeing, but it really is a city, complete with roads and shopping districts and wealthy neighborhoods and not-so-wealthy neighborhoods.  And more freaking temples than you can shake a stick at.

Pompeii

Vesuvius in the background.

Walking all around Pompeii, down the very same streets that Pompeiians were walking the day Vesuvius blew up, was surprisingly chilling.

Pompeii street

We had to be out of the site by sunset, and due to our rain-and-wine break we were unfortunately a little rushed.  We trekked all over, taking in as much as we could.  At the far end of the city was a huge amphitheater.   We channeled our inner Tomb Raider and climbed through a barricade to get to the top!

Fresco

Illegal views are the best views.

Having toured a fair few of ancient sites in Italy, and now in Greece, I have to say I have never seen a place quite like Pompeii.  I guess being buried under ash for almost 2,000 years went a long way to preserving it almost perfectly.  There were buildings outside that still had painted street signs visible.  Back during the first excavations, all the rooms still had furniture inside (of course, where was it going to go?)

And then there were the people.

I know you can't really see it from this photo, but this guy has toenails.  Toenails.  There were folds in their clothing.  And you could see their expressions.

I did not expect that coming face to face with death that happened 2,000 years ago to affect me so jarringly. But seeing these human ash statues made it impossible not to be affected.  These were people.  Dying horribly.  It's not every day you get to stare into the frozen-in-time face of what that looks like.  And it was all instantly very real.

It seems weird, after writing that, to say I enjoyed Pompeii.  That's not the right word.  I felt very privileged to be able to visit this incredible piece of history, to walk the streets, run my fingers over stones, climb the steps of their amphitheater.  To look into their faces, and wonder what on earth they might have been thinking.  To them it must have seemed like the straight-out end of the world.  And for them, it was.