Day 7
After a delicious breakfast from Gippy. One of the things on my bucket list was to venture the Paths of the Gods…a hike fron Praino to Positano which actually was the smaller of several paths….the longest one took 10 hours…nope…I warned the girls it was going to be quite a hike even for the shortest hike. But they said they wanted to donit….Getting directions we caught the bus to Praino and after waiting several minutes we caught another bus to take us to the beginning of the trail. I can tell by this time the girls were not necessarily thrilled. So again I told them before we got out of the bus that if they didn’t want to go , to please don’t go. I do not want them to do anything other than what they like and please do not wait or worry about me. I could also tell that whether it was to make decisions seemed or make choices everyone seemed to be worried about each other and what the others were going to do.. I kept assuring them to please do whatever they wanted to do or see, Google what they want to see, or anything they had read about I would help them find it. That is why I didn’t micro organize everything because since we all had different likes we would want to do different things… and with my interest and already being to many of these destinations I did not want to drag them to what I like and let them miss what they wanted. This is why I said at beginning of the planning that I wanted them to be a be able to go without me and be able go on their own.
Anyway, after riding around and around on the bus, we finally reached the entryway to the path. According to the reading the path was 1000 steps up and 2000 steps down….wow…how wrong that was. Instead it was a 1000 steps just to reach the beginning of the path.
As we enter the pathway and began the climb of the 1000 steps, huffing, puffing, and gasping for air, I wondered what I had gotten myself from into. Brush covering some steps, and broken rock on others we trudged on. I could see a church near the top of the mountain where the steps seemed to go. What seemed hours later we reached the church. A man there was selling refreshments and BJb viewing of the church was available. After resting we were happy we were half way there….until we seen the sign…”Beginning of Path of Gods” Oh my lord… we had not begun the path yet. The 1000 steps were just to get there! 4 hours later the steps were no more. It had turned into a literal rock climb. Pushing fingers into crevices, on all fours climbing over rocks and barriers. Going to the top of the cliff.500 meters above sea level. Gasping for air, guzzling 5 bottles of water, taking pictures and balancing on edges of cliffs…we traveled around 5 miles of this…up and down, over and through…Angie and I were behind the other two and it seemed we ended up descending down differently. When we finally began the descent down, my legs were swollen, feet were numb, fingers bleeding and my body hurt from head to toe. Then we began the stairs down…2000. It was ridiculous. Resting every 100 we continued ending in a road which had to be walked two more miles to get back to our room. 12 miles overall of the hardest trek I have ever done….hut at least I can say I accomplished it…barely.
travelingwithkim 