Another Kayak Excursion

Our last full day on Isola d'Elba. It's a good thing I'm getting to the end of this account - it's nearing the end of October and the details are slipping away. Between my photographs and the notes I scribbled on the plane ride home I've managed to retain a good deal of what happened on our trip. As it is, this will certainly be the most thoroughly documented trip I've EVER taken.

What may have transpired between getting out of bed at the villa and lowering my wobbly bloat into a kayak on the beach at Marciana Marina is now lost forever (I heard that sigh of relief!). Anyway, Carolyn had arranged a second day of kayaking with Gaudenzio and his faithful sidekick Valentina.

We struck out from the harbour and headed east along the coast. It was a wee bit choppy - not quite as bad as the end of our previous paddle but enough to be reckoned with. We rounded point after point, admiring the cliffs and the amazing variety of shorefront properties: houses way up on the cliff with stairs and ladders down to rocky jetties, houses built right on the rocks at the edge of the water, houses with immense patios and private docks. One wondered who might own them - film stars, government officials, Halliburton.

After a while, we headed in to a cove with a little beach and pulled up our boats. Coping with the waves was tiring and it felt good to flop into the shallows. Again, there's nothing like floating in salt water - being effortlessly supported and gently rocked. I don't remember who first noticed them but there were little purple jellyfish here and there in the water. Gaudenzio warned against touching them - I took a few pictures of one of them. Pretty little things.

We sat on the warm rocks for a little while and had a few nibbles. Someone, Carolyn?, had brought a box of Perugina Baci, those wonderful little hazelnut chockies, each with a whole hazelnut at their center and wrapped in shiny tinfoil printed with blue stars and each having a little saying about love inside? Yeah, them.

Back onto the water. It was at about this time that what I'll call an end-of-the-vacation grumpiness set in for me. I'd been told the previous day that if I didn't go on the post-beach driving tour of the southwestern part of the island that I wouldn't have seen the REAL Elba. (Mental game-show buzzer sound) Today I was told that going as far as the next point would reveal an amazingly beautiful view. (Mental game-show buzzer sound) Suddenly I felt very tired and unequal to the last leg of the paddle. Telling someone (John?) that I was going to wait at the current bay for their return, I turned and paddled in toward shore while the rest of the party continued along the coast. I don't know why my mental game-show buzzer kept going off. Spite, certainly, but also perhaps a touch of depression that our trip was coming to and end - desperation that we hadn't seen everything there was to see. I knew that I wouldn't get to see EVERYTHING. Going kayaking pretty much scotched my chance of seeing the Napoleon Villa (Paul was seeing it at that moment). To well-meant suggestions my childish reaction was to refuse and oppose. My apologies to all concerned.

Anyway, I paddled in desultory fashion around the Bay of Spite for a while and then decided to pull up on a beach that had some interesting boulders in the cliff above it. There was a nearly cave-like recess in the rocky wall of the hillside and I sat there in the shade, watching for the return of the kayaking party ("They just THINK they're having fun!"). There was a fair amount of rubbish on the beach. It reminded me a little of Ian Fleming's description of the rocky beach at the base of the French chalk cliffs in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". I picked up an attractive, stripey stone and put it in my pocket.

After having exhausted the entertainment potential of the Beach of Rubbish, I relaunched and headed out past a group of moored yachts (all of which had jolly names: "Gomorrah", "Midas", "Croesus" - I was in a really bad mood) and rejoined the party as they returned from The Most Beautiful Sight in the Mediterranean. Once again, my emotions had unerringly chosen the best possible course of action for me. Thanks for that.

A direct route back to Marciana Marina would have taken us more than a mile from shore, a course vetoed by Gaudenzio for safety reasons. We followed a middle course, a compromise between that and hugging the shoreline. The waves really were getting difficult to cope with. Occasionally a particularly large one would slop over the rim of the cockpit. While it was a bit of a slog, I did enjoy the trip back. John and I paddled near each other, occasionally stopping to allow the group to reform. Mauro was a juggernaut - he was ahead of us, or me anyway, the entire time.

Once back at Marciana, we helped Gaudenzio load the boats onto his trailer. We said thanks and goodbye and walked along the Marina to the gelateria where we bought cups of gelato which we then ate while strolling in the town. We finished out treat sitting on benches in a little public park overlooking the harbour from where we could see the sailboats in the marina bobbing at their mooring over planters of shocking pink bougainvillea. For my gelato flavour I had chosen chocolate with caramel and sea salt, which turned out to be my favourite of the entire trip. Fantastic.

Last Night in Poggio

Don't get me wrong, I really did enjoy the kayak trip. I was just in a mood - a mood which, I'm sorry to say, continued a while longer. Upon returning to the villa I learned that Paul had had an enjoyable scootering around the island and a diverting visit to the Napoleon Villa. There was a bit of a commotion involving the return of the scooters to the rental place - the scooter's luggage compartment refused to open, a helmet was forgotten, it was a whole big thing. Paul and I both had clumsy, embarrassing exchanges with other members of our party. While trying to decide whether to accompany the rest of the contingent to dinner in Marciana Marina, I inadvertently locked Paul into our room. It was then that we decided to do our own thing for dinner and walked up to the good ol' Trattoria Sciamadda in Poggio.

A lovely, quiet, uneventful meal concluded our final day on Elba.