Motion sickness is a curse.  Some say that only control freaks get motion sick, that it's really an anxiety reaction.  Tell that to my stomach.  I've been cursed since I was a kid on the winding mountain roads, and the small propellored plane flights over the Rocky Mountains.  Dramamine has been one of my favorite travel companions since childhood.

So when Rich suggested we take a 9 hour tour of the Amalfi Coast and the shoreline of Capri by small boat, my gut wrenched.  The boat would take us all along the coast with many opportunities to dive into the crystal blue Tyrrhenean Sea and swim and snorkle.  They drop you on the island of Capri to shop in the many high-end shops like Ferragamo and other fancy-pants designers and boutiques and make you feel like Jackie O', then get back on the little swaying boat for a tour of the famed Blue Grotto-- a beauty of a sea cave that you enter by swimming, and the entire cave is illuminated in an eerie blue light that appears to emanate from the water below.  Oh how Rich wanted to do this tour!

OK, I agreed.  I can load up on Dramamine.  Keep my eyes on the horizon.  Be the new namesake of the Green Grotto...  All night long the night before I fretted.  I worried about being the American tourista who spent the entire time puking over the edge.  And the one who made them turn the boat around and drop me off somewhere on the coastline with my backpack and thumb to hitch it back to Sorrento, while Rich swam with mermaids into the magical light of the Grotta Azurra.  I didn't sleep that night.

So in the morning, I told Rich to go ahead by himself, and I'd go tour round by myself.  And I was perfectly fine with that.  But he'd hear none of that.  After much discussion we decided to take the large ferry over to Capri, rent a scooter and tour the island that way.  This was a reasonable compromise, but I know Rich was a little disappointed. 

I felt the waves of pre-sick dizziness on the big boat, but the trip was short, and I kept my face in the wind like a dog in a pick-up truck.  Plus I did take a dramamine. 

The Island of Capri is breathtaking.  It is small, only about 10sq km in area.  But it juts out of the sea with about a 600m high elevation gain, basically straight up.  That's like 1000 feet out of the sea.  Don't make me do the real conversion.  I hate conversions.  Let's just say its super steep and basically a sheer cliff.  We went to the top by single-rider swinging chairlift, and looked down.  It was vertigo inducing heights, above the clouds, surreal almost, tiny toy boats floating on a clear blue ocean that you could see straight to the bottom.  So beautiful.

Let's talk about the scooter.  They rent bright banana yellow scooters to the touristas.  No question who's the tourist here.  The roads are narrow, and the cars and busses are fast and unyielding.  There is a thin road cut into the cliff face, and that's how you get to the top.  I am on the back of this bright yellow death cycle, that Rich is driving at top speed of 10.  Miles per hour.  And I am gripping.  Nattering in his ear.  Drive faster.  Watch out.  Here comes a bus.  Another car is passing us.  Slower.  Don't turn here.  The worst backseat driver ever.  He tried to bump me off on a speed bump, but I had too good of a hold.  Beer helped-- in combination with Dramamine, I was asleep in my Gnocchi.  

We went swimming on the rocky shore, along with 200 straight out of a Bain de Soleil commercial-tan-skinned, scantily-clad Europeans.  We were the fattest, whitest, most covered people there.  The water was gorgeous, and there was cliff jumping, all surrounded by these amazing cliffs.  It was refreshing, but nowhere great to sit, unless it was on someone's lap, or a jagged rock.  We tried to find the Blue Grotto, but could not find the road to get us there. 

Then it was time to go down to the ferry home.  The best part of the down trip is that we were on the inside of the road-- the side away from the cliff.  The busses got cliff side.  But they hugged the inner side of the road, making for a tight pass.   I kept hearing Rich say "Jeezus, jeezus jeeeezus, shit." every time a bus would pass.   And all I could imagine was the skin graft that would be required to repair my thigh from where the cliff rock removed the entire epidermis.  I closed my eyes, and actually took up praying.  But we made it down, intact.  Shaking.  "That was fun!" Rich quips...   um, yeah.  fun.  I opted for that in place of a rock-the-boat tour of a lifetime.  Next time I get on the boat.