Coasting the Amalfi Coast

Waiting twenty-five minutes in the Italian sunshine and even muscling my way to third in line at the bus door at what was supposed to have been the first stop of the route still did not assure me of the prime left side window seats. Actually it didn't assure me of any seats as by the time I shoved my ticket in the validation machine and reached for the nearest duo of seats a punk backdoor-boarding kid jumped into them with a dumbass grin on his face. That's how it's gonna be, eh? I shoved my dumb ass onto the only remaining seat available on the whole bus much to the lurching thirteen year old girl's chagrin. Katherine was less aggressive and much less enthused about the 75 minute scenic bus ride standing crammed between less spry Italian adults on the so-called-but-not-actually air conditioned bus. Stuck on the far side aisle I silently steamed as I tried to look past the sleeping, iPod listening, cell phone tapping prepubescents completely ignoring the outrageously beautiful scenery of the Amalfi coast. As I figured, 15 minutes into the ride someone exited beside Katherine (who refused my gentlemanly offered seat) and I sent sibling telepathy her way. "Hiss - Kate! Take that seat! Go! Sit, now! No - the lady's going for it! Katherine, no!" Yet she seemed the genius when mere minutes later the prime seat, front-left, opened up and she snagged it. I won't lie, I was jealous. That is until I leapt two rows when the front-right seat with full windshield view became available.

With the seats sorted just in time to leave the city and hit the coast I was able to sit back and enjoy the ride by buckling in and gripping tight. For the Amalfi highway is little more than a one-lane paved highway that barely clings to the edge of a coastal cliff which winds in and out, up to a hundred metres above the sea. Yet here it is attempting to support a huge tourist scene, demanding long passenger buses ply its route half-hourly in both directions, in addition to local traffic and unaccustomed foreigners in rental cars. I couldn't blame the driver for tooting his two-toned horn at each blind corner (which was essentially every corner). He'd first turn the bus-sized steering wheel with the dolphin emblem in the middle 540° into the corner before a 720° back out and into the next. People respected the beep as well, with one guy who was leaning in a driverside window absolutely scrambling to get out of the way and another flipping in his sideview mirror nearly at the cost of his fingers. For it truly was that close - when we met another bus both had to slam on the brakes and the other backed up into the line of traffic behind it so we could basically kiss mirrors as we inched by. During this manoeuvring the brazen motorbikes would sneak up and squeeze through as one bus was reversing and the other moving forward! Clearly posted "Give way to overtaking vehicles" in descending languages Italian, English, German, French seemed to have emboldened some to pass at importune times, such as construction zones, but since everyone heeded the request we witnessed no injuries. I did fear for the pedestrians putting their lives on the line to walk on the road, for there was surely no sidewalk outside the concrete guardrail. The bus, I decided, with its dizzy dolphin was a hair-raising enough way of traversing this gorgeous coastline and I was grateful not to be driving it myself. Cycling on the other hand.. that would be amazing!