Prairie Boy

Saturday Oct. 15

A mixture of sadness and anticipation swells in our hearts as we prepare to say goodbye to this fabulous group of people with whom we have spent the last week. Laughing, talking, eating, drinking, talking, walking, knitting, working, talking, sleeping filled our lives for a glorious week as guests of Bettina and Rolf.

Now we are off to Salerno to pick up our van head out on our own.  First Rolf stops at an ancient Greco-Roman ruins at Paestum where we walk along and view the temples. Time was limited so we were unable to satisfy the historians in the group who would like to have spent a full day in the museum here.

Greek Temple at Paestum.

Our next stop was a very interesting dairy operation where Water Buffalo were being managed for production of "true mozzarella cheese" and other dairy products.  Rolf had spent a number of years as an agriculturalist in the Phillipines where he worked with Water Buffalo so had interesting stories to tell us.  Apparently, this is a highly sought after commodity and the producers can sell everything they prepare each day.  We purchased some yoghurt that was a highlight of our breakfast the next morning.

Water buffalo dairy herd.

Big hugs followed as our Canadian group said goodbye to the German ladies and Bettina.  Rolf drove us into Salerno and we found our van and worked out the paper work.

The first view of our van.

You expect me to drive in Italy!

The next few hours were occupied with navigating and driving through tiny streets, breathtaking cutoffs by fearless scooter operators, narrow misses with rear view mirror kissing, autostrada driving at 130 km/hr. and stops at highway 'Area Servicio' for Cappuccino Italiano.  We eventually arrived at Gia Mia our next stop.  Mike GioMarco met us, settled us into our accommodation and then escorted us to a local mall to buy food and wine.  After a delightful evening with Mike and his son (also Mike) at a local restaurant where there was dancing with the locals accompanied by music from an Italian accordion player, we returned home and headed to bed.  The temperature has fallen to +3-5 degrees C so we needed extra heat to warm our rooms and get to sleep.