by John Keahey
A blast from the ferry’s horn gets me moving. I board and, just minutes later, the ship gently pulls away from the dock and begins cutting its way through a crystal-like sea. As the ferry picks up speed, the sky-blue water begins splitting into cascading foam at the ferry’s bow. A churning light blue wake follows the broad stern. The ride is smooth. I can barely feel the rumble of engines as Livorno slips away. Off to the northwest, Gorgona comes into clear view. We don’t turn toward that island but stay steady on a course for Capraia, which is growing bigger ahead. It bolts out of the sea in gray shadow, the north end dropping down at a sharp angle from the 880-foot summit of Monte Scopa to the water’s edge. As we move closer, with the midafternoon sun slipping down to the west, the island begins to change color from light gray to light green. And as we approach the tiny port, I notice its marina is festooned with the points of tiny white sails of small boats and yachts.
The sun beating down on the exposed part of the passenger decks is merciless. I retreat into the air-conditioned interior, slam down a quick espresso—my third, maybe fourth, of the day—and slump into a comfortable chair next to a large window. Despite the volume of caffeine, I doze. Then, feeling a shift in the giant ferry’s engines, I jolt awake and can see Capraia just ahead. Outside, as I watch the docking from the shade of an overhang, the charm of the island’s port—its small boats and vibrantly painted line of buildings—become real. The ferry executes a 180-degree turn, and the large ship backs up to a cement pier.
The line of small commercial buildings, which extends perpendicular from the water, makes up the tiny space known simply as Porto. The buildings house a ticket office, a tiny pharmacy, a diving shop, and a few small hotels and restaurants.
A van marked with the name of the island’s one four-star hotel waits for the ferry to unload. There is also a passenger bus that goes to a small village on a bluff above Porto. Its name, also simple and direct, is Paese, which means “country” in Italian. Paese is tucked in a small cleft just over the crest of a hill to the south. It is connected to Porto by the island’s only paved road, just nine hundred feet long. This narrow, gently curved stretch runs slightly parallel to an ancient wide stone pathway that shoots up from the port straight to the town. Tourists should not bother to bring cars to Capraia. There are precious few places to park them and, besides, this is a place for walking.
I climb into the hotel van and am taken up the paved road and into the hotel’s driveway. The facility is a nice one, and the views from the rooms, of Porto and the marina below as well as the Tuscan Sea beyond, are stunning. I foolishly had made a reservation that included two meals a day at the hotel. The food, surprisingly for Tuscan restaurants, was not outstanding, and my decision kept me from eating in some of the other more appealing places in Paese that were just a short walk away.
In addition to the large hotel, laid out like a resort on a hillside that plunges down into the sea, there are only two small guesthouses and two small hotels in Paese. Signs also indicate apartments for rent inside some houses. I was on Capraia during the last week of the summer tourist season, and not another room was to be had. The summertime population here can top three thousand visitors on any given day, compared to the three hundred to four hundred year-round Capraiesi.
My first adventure, late in the afternoon of my arrival, was a long walk on one of the many walking paths that crisscross this small island. I started outside the Church of San Nicola in Paese’s main square. A dirt path that likely was once a mulattiere, or mule track, in the eleventh century, starts near the whitewashed building’s outside wall and traverses one of the few relatively flat areas on the hilly island. From this plateau I could look far to the east across the sea at the hazy outline of the Italian mainland. If I were to continue to the southwest, in the valley between Monte Albero and Monte Forcone, and dip onto the crest of the island’s western slope, I suspect I would eventually see the closer outline of Corsica’s northern tip. But I didn’t go that far. The late afternoon was excruciatingly hot, and I was not prepared for such a long walk. That view would have to wait until I could get to Capraia’s western coastline, by boat, the following day.
Because it was near the end of summer, the high plain this trail crossed offered a dun-colored landscape of low scrubs, occasional clusters of olive trees, and a few plots of irrigated grape vines. Low-riding walls of stone delineate various plots of land, and very quickly the small stone Church of Santo Stefano at Piano, long deconsecrated, pops up out of the landscape. The single-vault interior is barren; the floor is the wrinkled surface of the stone outcrop the church appears to be built on.
Its origins have been traced to the second century AD, but in the ninth century, Muslim raiders destroyed the structure—and likely the small town that surrounded it. The raiders hauled many of the locals onto their ships and off into slavery elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The church, rebuilt in the tenth and eleventh centuries, is all that remains of the original town. There is no obvious evidence—except for a large, deeply buried cistern near the church—that there ever was a village here.
Stumbling onto such structures during a casual walk is not the only reason to wander on Capraia. I had a conversation later that evening with a clerk in a small shop in Paese. She told me that the best season for walkers on this island is spring, when the landscape is blanketed in wildflowers. By late August, much of the bright colors of spring and early summer are gone. But there are other attractions.
“Did you see many birds?” she asked.
Although I do not know the names of many varieties, I did recognize ravens high in the sky. Raven is corvo in Italian, she said. I told her I had seen small, low-flying birds nervously flitting amongst the scattered bushes. She said these were likely warblers.
“Those with a creamy breast, black heads, and red eyes are Sardinian warblers,” she said. She dug out a worn bird-watching guide from a drawer behind the counter, flipped through a few pages, and showed me a picture. “Some migrate, others stay here.” She is an experienced bird watcher and spends many of her off days prowling through the brush.
“But the spring is the best time to be here for that. People who come in July and August only want to lounge on boats, swim, and do the snorkel.”
Knowing what I now know about the lure of this Tuscan island, I could have found the solitude I crave here in the spring. My next trip to this place will be for several days longer. There simply wasn’t enough time in two and a half days for me to really get to know Capraia and to walk the dozens of trails, all accessible from Porto or Paese.
* * *
The following morning, I wandered down the hillside to Porto. As I walked along that short stretch of asphalt that is the island’s only paved road, I could hear a low, breathy whistle coming up from the marina, the sound of a light wind passing through the rigging of the dozens of small boats tied up at the piers. This rather pleasing hum lasted the day and into the night, a constant soundtrack of the island. I could hear it each morning as I stood on my tiny terrace overlooking the sea and drinking coffee, or as I wandered the hillside between Paese and Porto, or as I sat along the main pier enjoying the shade of a bar umbrella. It was there at night as I watched the sky darken and stars appear or in the predawn as the night’s dark-lilac sky began to shift toward light shades of pink.
One benefit of visiting Capraia in August is being able to lie back in a lounge chair and watch the star-filled sky during the Perseid meteor shower. There are only hints of lights from buildings there late at night, and when eyes adjust to the darkness the heavens erupt into the Milky Way. I saw my first meteor while sitting in the outdoor area of the hotel restaurant and, a few hours later, I climbed to the hotel’s highest level and found an unoccupied terrace. One after another, streaks of meteors flashed across the sky. I stopped counting at a dozen, all the while listening to the background hum of a light breeze through boat wires. These were the stars I remember from my youth, sleeping in the summer on a cot behind my house
set in the middle of Idaho farmland with nary a light to interrupt the heavens.
My usual practice of staying up late like this leads me to such experiences. I often do this in new places. Unless I am lounging on a terrace looking for shooting stars, I will often wander the cobblestones at night to get a different feeling for a small village or a large city at a time when nearly everyone else is inside. Footsteps ring hollow and bounce back at me off ancient stones; automobiles are quiet, the near silence only occasionally broken by the faraway whine of a scooter. The occasional murmurings of voices from a small restaurant or bar that caters to night owls like me lead me to my final cup of double espresso and, perhaps, a light dessert. Such late nights give me the time to plan what I will do the following day. Then I will have a reason to rise early, after five or six hours of sleep, to begin something new.
Rising early on my first morning, I wanted to find the ruins of a Roman villa where, local legend says, the Emperor Augustus, in AD 2, banished his daughter and only biological child, Julia. Most historians dispute that legend and believe she was banished instead to the island of Ventotene, located in the Tyrrhenian Sea much farther to the south and opposite the coastal Italian town of Gaeta located midway between Rome and Naples. Augustus definitely had issues: he banished his granddaughter, also named Julia, to a tiny island in the Adriatic Sea. Both Julias, he felt, had been guilty of promiscuity.
Whether the daughter, named by historians as Julia the Elder, had ever lived in Capraia is not important. Some Roman had, and various guidebooks for Capraia promise that Roman ruins exist. A rough map shows them located in Porto at the far end of the paved street that runs from the Toremar pier to a short distance inland. But there are no signs pointing to an archaeological site and none of the telltale piles of stones that usually are scattered around such sites.
At a small bar, I asked a young woman working there if she knew where the ruins were. She thought a moment, slightly shrugged her shoulders, and said the ruins must be in the dirt-covered parking lot next to the Church of the Assunta located at the point where the road swings left and heads up the hill toward Paese. It seemed strange that she wouldn’t know for sure, especially given that she told me she had lived on the island most of her life. “They must be there,” she said. “It is the only place.”
Heavy undergrowth surrounded the border of the parking lot. Along one side was a small stream. No ancient stones protruded through the lot’s dirt surface; the undergrowth around its fringes offered no clues. Niente. Nothing. I crossed the road on the other side of the church and found the same, just heavy undergrowth.
After an hour, I gave up and walked toward the marina, where I saw a woman sitting at a small table outside a nautical supply shop. She was selling tickets for a boat trip around the island. The price was reasonable, the trip would last for perhaps three hours or more, and it seemed like a great way to spend most of the day. I bought a ticket and then asked about the Roman ruins. She shrugged. “They are somewhere there,” she said, pointing to the Church of the Assunta. “Ma non lo so. [But I do not know].”
A small dish of gelato and then a double espresso kept me occupied during the hour-long wait for the boat to return from its morning tour. Finally a small boat with a heavily tanned, white-bearded man at the tiller pulled up to the dock, and a handful of people climbed out. A small group of seven or eight tourists had gathered with me at the water’s edge, and Maurizio the boatman motioned us on board. The engine roared, and we headed across the marina to another pier, where two more passengers were waiting. Fully loaded, we started our clockwise navigation of the island’s eighteen-mile coastline.
Maurizio spoke in rapid-fire Italian, first pointing out a tower high atop a headland southeast from the port. I caught enough of what he said to understand the tower was built by the Genoese during their time of occupation in the Middle Ages. Genoa and Pisa often alternated in dominating this part of the Mediterranean, and when the Pisans were in control, they built their own tower on a headland north of Porto.
The eastern side of Capraia is more gently sloped than what we will see on the western shoreline, Maurizio explained. When a massive earthquake hit the island five million years ago, half of it collapsed into the sea, shearing off the western edge, resulting in steep cliffs and caves. The water is deep along the western coastline, unlike the eastern shore, which has shallow waters perfect for swimming, snorkeling, and diving.
The basins that make up the Tyrrhenian and Ligurian seas, along with the Sea of Sardinia, began to take shape twenty million years ago. Over time, perhaps as long as ten million years ago, the Strait of Gibraltar closed through tectonic action, and the Mediterranean dried up, creating massive saltpans left by the evaporating seawater and exposing mountain ranges whose tops had been islands in the prehistoric sea. Five million years ago, over time, the strait reopened and the Atlantic poured back in, refilling the great sea in as short a time as two years. Those mountain ranges were once again submerged and tops again became islands.
Six of the seven islands of the Tuscan Archipelago are tops of mountains; Capraia is the only island of the group that was formed by volcanoes. The first volcano built it into a massive mountain with one dominant peak. Continued eruptions eventually divided that peak in two, and when the volcano became dormant, seawater, rain, and wind turned Capraia into the land of rolling hills, minor peaks, and plateaus that visitors see today.
The second, smaller volcano developed at the southeastern edge, its lava contributing to the construction of the coastline there. Maurizio the boatman steered us around that edge, bearing west and into a beautiful bay, the Cala Rosa. There were perhaps a half-dozen private boats anchored offshore, and people were swimming and snorkeling in the bay’s turquoise waters.
Maurizio cut the engine and passengers peeled off their clothes, revealing swimming suits, and jumped overboard. A few of us were not prepared for such an adventure, so we sat back with Maurizio and soaked in the beauty of the place.
It was then that I first noticed, on the rocky shoreline perhaps one hundred feet away, a magnificent profusion of multicolored stone layers left by successive lava flows from the smaller volcano millions of years ago.
On the coastline at Cala Rosa, the color of the hardened lava ranged from yellow to spots of light gray. After our swimmers climbed back on board, we resumed our journey, dodging in and out of several caves on the western and northwestern shores that had been formed by various lava flows from the first volcano.
In these small enclosures, barely large enough to hold the boat, droplets of water from underground springs on the steep slopes would drip down on us from the low ceilings. Each time we pulled into a cave, our swimmers would jump into the water, and Maurizio and the rest of us would wait patiently. The sea was calm. It was cool in the shelter of these massive cliffs and the interior of the caves. Just sitting there, watching the light bounce off the lava walls that were either white or various shades of tan, was pleasure enough for me.
We eventually crested the northeastern edge of the island and turned south toward the marina at Porto. Maurizio stopped the boat one last time. Here the water was so shallow that the swimmers could stand on the rock floor with water only up to their chests. Except for the occasional splashes from a couple of the snorkelers, we sat quietly in the tiny boat, lulled into serenity by its light rocking. To the northeast, we could see the gray outline of the prison island, Gorgona. We watched as large birds swooped down, plucking small fish from just beneath the surface. In the distance, sailboats glided past. Others were anchored as their riders lounged on deck or floated on the blue surface with snorkel gear and flippers. From the edge of the boat I could see small clusters of colorful fish in the shallow water, perhaps only three or four feet deep.
Eventually, Maurizio motioned the swimmers aboard, started his engine, and slowly headed toward the port. It had been a three-hour journey—one of the best days I had ever experienced in years of travel—and I could tell none of us w
anted it to end.
* * *
From my tiny terrace early on the morning of my third and last day on the island, it was obvious the sea had changed. Where the light blue water previously had been placid, dashes of white now kicked up on the surface. The sky remained nearly cloudless, but the sea was heaving. I suspected it would be a rough journey in the much-smaller ferry I was planning to take to Elba. My cell phone rang. It was a woman from the ferry company, calling to tell me my boat to Elba was being canceled because of rough seas.
“You can go back to Livorno on Toremar and take the train to Piombino and catch one of the larger ferries to Elba—if they are sailing,” she advised me. “These seas are very rough and sometimes even the bigger ferries will cancel.” Then, ominously, she said, “Maybe Toremar will cancel its trip today between Livorno and Capraia. You should check.”
After breakfast and a quick walk down the hill to Porto, I checked in at the Toremar office. The woman there sold me my return ticket and reassured me that the ferry would indeed arrive and then return to Livorno—“Unless,” she said, “it gets much worse.” Then, she added, smiling, “But of course it will not.”
The ferry was scheduled to arrive midafternoon, so I had several more hours to spend on Capraia. I walked back to the hotel, packed, checked out, and stored my bag. I made the quick walk into Paese and found another trail to follow that took me south along the coast. I could feel the upward tick in the wind’s intensity as I wandered along the short dirt path that took me to Punta della Bellavista, high on a cliff with a clear view of Elba, which was perhaps just a few dozen miles away across the open, whitecapped sea. I had a feeling that I would not make it there in the time I had left, but I would wait until arriving in Livorno before figuring out my next move.
