My Great Ponza Scheme

Had we had internet while we were in Ponza for the last 2 days I would have surely sent out a mass email asking for your investment dollars so that I could have worked out a way to disappear there permanently. With no forwarding address.

Ponza is the largest of the Pontine Islands, an volcanic culvert about 30 miles off the west coast of Italy.  If I had to choose between these islands or Sardinia, it would be a tough call.  Clarity of blue water:  same.  Water temp: Ponza may have been a few degrees warmer.  Food:  Pizza equally delicious, though Ponza's old-world every-day on the street, with the pizza oven tended by old guys who have probably been making pizza since they could say mozzerella...oh, and the oven? built into a cave wall.  You cant compete with that.  The thing that really made Ponza stand out was the grottos (the sea caves).  The caves are just a part of life in Ponza.  they dot the island and are more than landscape there...they are part of the infrastructure.  A garage?  Cave.  Cute little boutiques.  Caves.  Even the caves had caves.  The main thouroughfare went through a sooty, fumey natural tunnel, about 20 meters long.  Halfway through either the ocean or someone had the sense to cut a hole in the side of the tunnel so that you can see out over the ocean.  As you pass that, squarely about the midpoint of the tunnel was the Tunnel Discotech.  It was,of course, another little cave, lest a cave go to waste.  Just in case you needed to pull over at midnight and dance.

Other than their part in city planning, the caves are also out of 'town' and dot the shoreline.  Along the water, we explored some cares big enough to drive a small boat into (much bigger than our little dinghy).  Others you swim into and swim through (natural arches under the water...beautiful swimming.  Some are further opened and defined by humans over the years for boathouses, fish grottos, probably military use, and maybe just to attract tourists.  They were sometimes connected by a network of manmade and natural tunnels. 

Graeme at first thought the caves were cool, until he, Aethan, and I walked through a larger one (none were big enough to get lost in or go very deep).  He freaked out about the sounds of the water making that ga-whop sound against the walls of the cave, which amplified and echoed.  There were dark crevasses, usually filled wiht water, and just the caveyness of it spooked him. But Aethan and I loved the natural windows that opened out to the sea below or looking through a tunnel (but no discotech) into the next room.  It was like we were running though someones house that was filled with crystal blue water and light.

I learned the mystery of why seafood is so expensive, and I found a solution.  The paucity of fish is related to why the water is so blue:  it is the lack of plankton, which, apparently it has something to do with the lack of perceptible tide in the Med, which limits tidal 'life', and all goes back to the plankton.  It doesnt take a marine biologist to know that limited plankton = few little fishies; few little fishies = few big fishies.  It is nothing new, the Romans used to moan about the poor fishing, too.  Fish is 10- 30 Euros/kilo (or about $8 - 20/pound) for a fish - and I mean the fish, not the neat little fillets wrapped in plastic. And you dont want to eat that $8 fish...we're talking sardines and mackeral here.   The solution?  My new speargun.  I used it today, in fact.  I took down a marlin just before breakfast (just kidding, I dinged a bottom feeder), but I am just getting a feel for it.  I cannot wait to provide for my family in the most simple terms.