My Pirate Island

boating!
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The tour bus took us down the windy roads into Sorrento around 9 a.m. and we walked to the port from the center of town. After hanging around the port for a few minutes and attempting to wake up all of my tired friends with antics from singing to dancing we caught the ferry to Capri. I was a little nervous because my last trips on a ferry have not gone that well, but this one turned out ok. We arrived in Capri about 40 minutes later ready to hit the ground running.

My friends Ed and Sarah wanted to rent a boat and I was all for that as I absolutely love the water. We ran into a few other folks from Umbra who were also interested and soon we had a group of nine people ready to hit the ocean! We rented a big pontoon like rubber boat and went to buy up groceries for the trip. Once lunch and supplies were purchased we reported back, got a short lesson in how to drive…it was a pretty basic boat, imagine a 12ft green dinghy. One girl with us, Cassie, lives on the beach and so she took over driving the first leg. We were off on our adventure around the island of Capri!

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I don’t even know how to describe this place, but I will do my best. Our boat rolled along on the turquoise water and we looked up at rock cliffs that rose straight out of the ocean. Little caves could be seen in the water and up the hillside. Occasionally a house could be seen high on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. It was absolutely beautiful. All nine of us just laughed continuously because we could not believe our eyes. We felt like something out of a rap video…especially my friend Ed who was the only guy with eight girls!

friends
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We explored every nook and cranny that we could find. Around the first corner of the island we saw a tiny grotto hiding in the rocks and we dropped anchor to go explore. It was a long swim but really cool to go inside the cave underwater. We thought this grotto was cool because we had no idea what was to come. After swimming back out to the boat we took off in search of more fun and found plenty of it.

Our next stop was at a huge cave up in the cliffs. There were stairs up to the cave so we left the boat with a couple of people and took turns climbing into the mountain. This cave had a huge hole looking out onto the sea but on the inside was covered with stalactites and stalagmites. It was ridiculous and even now I am smiling just thinking about it.

grottos
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Our last major stop was definitely my favorite. We stop at this huge grotto which actually connected underground to another bay with two other grottos! I swam into the first one and soon found myself outside again and facing even larger caves. This time around we got everyone into the grotto. Several people from our group hadn’t brought bathing suits and they went swimming in their clothes. One other girl couldn’t swim so we got her a life jacket and helped her into the grotto; it was a blast.

From the top down
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When our time was up we returned the boat and stepped back onto land our bodies attempting to adjust to the sudden stability. As a group we headed up to the top of the island, stopping along the way for some gelato of course. We rode a chairlift to the highest peak on the island and looked back down on the water where we had been only an hour before. The view was unbelievable. It was amazing to see the island from dual perspectives, top and bottom. I have never seen anything Mediterranean or even much in the Caribbean and this was hard to believe.

We sadly boarded the ferry back to Sorrento around 5 pm and returned to the real world. We spent the evening there doing our shopping and then headed back to the hotel for dinner. It was an incredible day.

On Sunday we went to Naples; there isn’t much to say about this other than we had some great views from the bus. Naples is a pretty metropolitan and dangerous city so we didn’t see too much of it. The one thing I took away from Naples though was the intensity of Italian fashion here. At noon on a Sunday there were girls out in stilettos and the hottest styles in Europe, needless to say, I was impressed.

After a long bus ride we finally returned to Perugia at about 8 pm on Sunday. While I was sad to see the weekend end I was also exhausted. I definitely have memories to last me a lifetime and new friends as well. I cant imagine a better outcome.