Matera

September 14th

We entered Basilicata, before we began staying there, mainly to see the now famous city/town of Matera. A two hour bus ride took us to this out of the way spot, which isn't saying much since most of Basilicata is out of the way. Why famous? Mel Gibson came through a few years earlier and filmed "Passion of the Christ" here. The reason? The Sassi. These are old dwellings that were occupied up until the 50s-60s due to over-crowding. Built onto and into the side of the cliff the buildings are attached to the front of caves, making it the oldest occupied cave dwellings in Europe or something. Twelve kilometres long, four hundred thousand kilos, and other measurements. Okay, I'm making it up, apart from the cave bit. The Sassi sounded interesting and added to our odd housing collection after visiting the Trulli.

Matera is now geared towards tourism. The Sassi, which also showed the level of poverty reached in the region, are being renovated as desirable places to live or hotels for the tourists. There is even a Stations of the Cross walk, where you can follow in the footsteps of Mel I guess. There are caves that you can go into, but you tend to need to pay or eat or sleep. And this all seems to cover up the desolation that really is Basilicata. From what we could tell their major other production was gravel, which they quarry and, from the look of it, grow in fields. Matera itself seems to be losing it's charm, at least that was what we thought as we watched them pave the roads.

It must be noted that as we trained our way through Basilicata en route to the west coast, Basilicata does have some stunning scenery and wilderness. Like Umbria, but more stony, with the touch of the turn of seasons as we floated over valleys before plunging through yet another tunnel.

Maratea

September 15th to 17th

Where we did stay was the similarly named but completely different Maratea. On the small stretch of the Tyrrhenian Sea that belongs to Basilicata -- how they drew these boundaries I have no idea -- we were lead to believe there are grey sandy beaches. More specifically we ended up staying at Marina de Maratea, at a quite plush resort and short mountain goat's climb from the black, stony beach. It was fantastic with the same crystal clear, warm water that you get in Positano and the like, without the cost and hordes of tourists. Of course the place isn't quite as nice, but it's a fabulous place if you just want to relax and float in the extra buoyant Trrrrrryhenian. Which we did.

There are a number of small towns in the location a short train-ride away, including Greek ruins and a medieval-like township up in the hills, and a 70 metre tall statue of Jesus on top of a local mountain. Doesn't everyone have one of these? We almost walked up to the town in search of a Bancomat, but didn't even consider going further up. We did walk/tumble down to the local port of Porto de Maratea, which is supposed to be like a mini Amalfi. It does have a cute mini-harbour and very mini church, but most of the resemblence came from the replicated rich parking a sodding great boat in the bay. Most people there weren't watching the view, but rather the F1 Grand Prix. The Ferrarris were in front after all...

Did we mention the swimming and crystal clear water. We only went three times in two days. Dinner? Seafood of course and a wonderful DOC bottle of wine (Hal tells me the only one in the region, but I keep forgetting which region that is.) We left for Calabria the next day.

Summary

Rating time! So again here are my purely scientifically crap and mathematically stretched ratings of each town: