Catania to Athens | Day 2

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Tropea to Templars

After a beautiful late afternoon and evening in Tropea’s centro storico we woke up to a perfectly sunny morning.

Our first destination for the day was the Ionian coast of Calabria where we hoped to take a longer break, perhaps a good half hour. Or so we planned. Google estimated it would take us just under 3hrs, we assumed four.

It would be the longest riding day of the trip so we set out around 8am.

Within minutes of departure, we paused briefly at the yacht port below for a couple photos and some minor wrenching then pointed our bikes north toward Pizzo which we reached some 45min later.

As I suspected, Pizzo was a worthy destination as well. More medieval in feeling if not architecture, the town borrowed little from Tropea. I was not surprised to find it on a list of a dozen most beautiful off-the-beaten-path villages in Italy a few days later. As pretty as it was, we didn’t feel comfortable leaving our fully packed bikes sitting for an hour or two in an unsecured, open parking lot. This is where hard luggage cases would have come in handy.

Looking back at our trip, Tropea to Pizzo was probably the most attractive stretch of the Calabrian coast. I could easily imagine spending a week vacationing here shuttling between the two towns and frequenting one of the beaches along the way.

Some half hour north of Pizzo we jumped over on E45. The autostrada first takes you along the coast then cuts between two mountain chains, Catena to the west and Sila to the east. While perhaps not as beautiful as Catania to Messina a day earlier, this is still a very enjoyable, fast mountain ride. Min was particularly taken with the nearly fluorescent green of the early spring visible everywhere in the foothills.

Higher elevations were still covered in snow these last days of March. I think we hit a low of 11C on the way.

Approaching northern edges of Calabria we took a sharp turn onto SS554 east toward the Ionian coast.

The land here is flat. No longer in the mountains, you’re suddenly transported into a completely new climate. The balmy air, the reappearance of palm trees, the light colored soil — everything about it tells you that beaches are not far away.

Minutes later, we were driving along Calabria’s Ionian coast. The traffic here was sparse and unhurried, the views of the crystal clear waters aplenty.

Earlier that morning I had asked AI about a good pit stop on our way to Matera, our destination for the day. We were now approaching an area with two good options. Just short of reaching the first, however, we came upon a lone stone castle right on the edge of the shores of the Ioanian that doubles as a restaurant.

If it was good enough for the Knights Templar eight centuries earlier it would have to do for us as well.

Needless to say, our half hour pit stop ran an hour over as we dined al fresco within the castle walls.

Castelo to Matera

The final stretch for the day, from the seaside Castelo to Matera, took us first along the coast and then into rolling hills. Basilicata, the region just north of Calabria, is known for being rather quiet and sparely populated. The ride into the hills was seemingly unremarkable, at least compared to everything else we saw this day.

But this land hides its secret well.

As one climbs the final few kilometers up to Matera nothing gives away the sights which are about to overwhelm all senses. I’ve seen Min excited many times along our trip. Not here. When we parked our bikes in the heart of the city five minutes into its pale cobblestone streets her eyes were wide open and stunned.

“This is a filmset”, she said.

She was right. I don’t think a moon landing would have made a stronger impression on either one of us.

In all our travels, we’ve never seen anything like it.

Most Italian cities have a centro storico. This was a centro pre-pre-storic. People have lived here continually for eight, perhaps even eleven thousand years. Let that sink in for a moment. This predates Mesapotamia, the cradle of human civilizations, by at least three thousand years.

Naturally, we slept in a cave that night.

What a day.

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