Bonjourno, Positano!

First Published in Options, The Edge Malaysia, 20 February, 2016

Almost too pretty to be true, Positano lodges itself in one’s memory

I was in the hamlet of Montepertuso, about 300 meters high on a rocky escarpment, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea shimmering blue far below.  Montepertuseo was small, with the customary church and a few buildings, but it had a breathtaking view of the rugged coastline, with its craggy cliffs.  Just below, the picturesque town of Positano was spread over the contours of the steep terrain that descended down to the sea.

Montepertuso means “hole in the mountain”, and a name like that does not arise from whimsy or by accident.  Above the village, there was a limestone ridge with a large hole right through it. It was a natural formation, although local legend attributes it to a battle between the Devil and the Virgin Mary. I climbed up flights of stony steps, above the village, past narrow gardens terraced into the steep hillside, and after an energetic climb, stood at the base of the vast hole.  It was a natural funnel, and there was a mighty wind with a whooshing sound as I stepped into it, poised momentarily in a sort of rocky portal, before descending to the other side, where it was suddenly still again.

I followed the narrow path through dense forest, onto a broader footpath.  One side would take me down onto the narrow, winding tarmac road, which I would share with cars, buses and the occasional mad cyclist, or I could take the other side, a footpath which would follow the rugged contours of the steep slope, working my way above and around the back of Positano.

I wasn’t in Montepertuso by chance, having walked there from Nocelle, another small hamlet plastered precariously onto the side of a steep cliff. A footpath, which follows an ancient route used by villagers, connects the two villages. Nocelle is even smaller than Montepertuso and derives its name from the harvest of nuts for which it is well known.

Nocelle is the terminus of the Sentiero degli dei, the evocatively named “Path of the Gods”. It is a hiking trail on the side of the cliffs high above the Mediterranean Sea, with a view of Amalfi Coast, an area of such scenic splendour that it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Path of the Gods is one of the most famous walks in Italy, trodden by the likes of DH Lawrence, Calvino, Goethe and others, who have waxed lyrical over its beauty.  And after the walk, there is the real pot of gold at the end - Positano.

Back on the footpath, I met a couple of middle-aged Italian women in sweaters, hunting for wild asparagus. They didn’t speak English, but confirmed that I was on the scenic route to Positano.  The footpath was wide enough for one person.  It passed through forest and over small mountain streams and occasionally an open patch from which I could glimpse the sea far below. Wildflowers in bloom hugged the sides of the path.  The dense vegetation harboured a wealth of wildlife and vegetation types, described in the UNESCO citation.

At times, the path climbed rather steeply, and sometimes, on one side it skirted the mighty, naked limestone cliffs that soared vertically high overhead. I didn’t meet anyone else along the path that day, and given the ruggedness of the terrain, it was unsurprising that it was largely undeveloped and wild in character.

Slowly, I skirted the town below, describing a semicircle, and after a few hours of hiking, the footpath joined another pathway with wooden hand-railings at a T-junction. One side led upward, eventually, to the mountain village of Santa Maria del Castello, but I was headed in the other direction, down towards Positano.

There were hikers along the path, including an elderly visiting English couple with hiking poles, tackling the endless flight of stairs. The gentleman had lived in Malaysia for several years, leaving Kuching in Sarawak in 1965. 

After a long descent, I emerged onto the tarmac road. This was part of the scenic Amalfi drive, which hugs the coastline, linking towns along the coast. The parking situation in Positano is so dire that cars of residents often park along this narrow stretch during the night.

There were narrow flights of stairs between buildings, and this is the way people make their way around, for Positano is a town which dates back well beyond Roman times. There is a single one-way road which folds back on itself through the town, which is a great patchwork quilt of multi-hued buildings spread over the hillside, and there are a good many narrow steep alleys of staircases, so steep as to be almost ladders – a veritable maze of them, all over the town, between buildings. 

My hotel, anchored onto the side of a steep section of slope, didn’t even have road access.  Guests arriving by car would alight at a bend in the one-way road, and haul themselves and their luggage up a couple of flights of narrow staircases that served the buildings in that area, to the hotel entrance. Nor was this the only such hotel, as the majority of hotels in the town had no actual driveway.

Settled in my hotel, I had a million-dollar view from the balcony of the town, following the contours of the terrain, the high cliffs behind the town, and the undulating coastline snaking away.  It had been worth every step of the walk that had brought me here.

Positano is unabashedly a tourist town, but a stylish tourist town, not so tacky as to be given to false glamour, and retaining much of the old-world charm of a small village, yet with enough of the appurtenances of luxury to appeal to the well-heeled traveller. And small it is, with a resident population of some 3,000 people, with no room for expansion.  Its location made it an important port during a period in its long history, but it was also prey to pirate attacks. 

The name of the town supposedly derives from one of these episodes, when attacking pirates made off with a sacred relic from the town’s main church. As they were making their dastardly getaway, a great storm broke out.  The frightened pirates heard a heavenly voice proclaim “Posa! Posa!” (Put it back! Put it back!). When they returned the relic, the weather suddenly turned calm, enabling them to leave. 

The next day, I made my way down to the ‘local’ beach, via a series of steep staircases which made me wonder how older residents of the town coped.  Waves from the Mediterranean Sea surged in foamy sheets across the dark and pebbly beach, from which there was a walkway over a rocky headland to the main, ‘tourist’ beach of Marina Grande.  From here, it was apparent how steep the terrain of Positano was, and how flat land was a precious commodity, so that parking space was limited and expensive, with children’s playgrounds constructed on the flat roofs of buildings. 

There was a small port at one corner of Marina Grande for boat trips to outlying islands and Capri. The beach itself was broad, sandy and extensive, and fronted by expensive restaurants, hotels and private villas, for the nearer the beach, generally the more expensive the property. 

This was the nexus of tourist Positano, with high-end boutiques, where the beautiful people and celebrities hung out, and where the main cathedral, the imposing Santa Maria Assunta, was located, with a great tiled dome and a bell tower.  The sacred relic from which the town derives its name was supposedly still housed within the cavernous interior of the church. 

I took a walk along the narrow main road, which could be choked by a single car stopping to let a passenger alight.  There were art galleries, small gelaterias, cafes, specialty boutiques, shoe shops, photography shops, clothes shops, but also outlets for the local residents, such small grocery shops selling daily necessities for the kitchen.   I stopped at one of these, a small family business, stacked to the rafters with all sorts of provisions, and also fruits and vegetables.  They sold cheeses, hams and preserved meats and roasted vegetables in oil. Although most people bought these for the home, they made me a simple sandwich from what was at hand. 

Munching a sandwich, I explored the narrow, steep alleys, climbing and descending, obtaining glimpses of people’s homes when the doors opened and someone would emerge and nod a “Bonjourno”.  Positano was stretched over the contours of the mountainside, but the wilderness was never far away, as the town was ringed by cliffs and dense vegetation. There were great spills of limestone rock and vegetation where nothing could be built, with one great swathe in the middle of town, so Positano had been hard won from the unforgiving terrain.

Writing for Harper’s Bazaar in May 1953, American novelist John Steinbeck remarked on the dream-like quality of Positano even after you’ve left the place. Decades later, it is still like that: it lodges itself in your consciousness, and never quite leaves it alone after that.