Author: Pierpaolo Montali
I'm about to pack the car with the large amount of luggage for a family that's going away for a couple of weeks for a short summer vacation. They'll be traveling about 1050 kilometers to reach their destination, along with my ever-present scuba gear. The destination: Marina di Pisciotta, in the province of Salerno, after the Amalfi coast and before the Gulf of Policastro.
Many doubts and perplexities cross my mind: the distance from home first and foremost, and then the destination, a place that doesn't seem close to the so-called "services" to which I believe I'm, after all, too accustomed.
I was wrong.
When we arrived at the holiday village, we found a beautiful, family-friendly atmosphere that immediately put us at ease and, above all, relaxed my two-year-old daughter.
Later, as I wander the paths immersed in the coastal vegetation of the structure overlooking the sea, I begin to smell the air, different from the usual one I breathe in a big city, I look at my beloved liquid element below, intense and transparent blue, then I hear the wind coming from the distance breaking the waves, the night on the shore, while I sleep in a comfortable and almost TV-like house with bamboo walls placed close to the shore on a rocky rise.
I realize that Cilento, Capo Palinuro, and the nearby Marina di Camerota are beginning to attract and fascinate me irresistibly.
I am then reminded of the classical myth, studied at school and translated from ancient languages, of PalinuroAeneas's helmsman, who, having reached these shores during his journey fleeing Troy, ravaged by the Achaeans, fell madly in love with Kamaraton, a girl as beautiful as a goddess but with a heart of stone, who did not reciprocate his love. In desperation, the young man decided to follow the image of his beloved to the bottom of the sea, thus giving his name to the entire Cape. Meanwhile, the girl was turned into a desolate rock by Venus, thus punishing her for her coldness.
It is said that Camerota stands today on these rocks, on a solitary hill south of the imposing Cape Palinuro, where the colourful medieval houses and Renaissance palaces are divided by alleys and narrow streets often surmounted by arches.
Cilento and its hundred villages, all different from each other, but unified by something that makes them unique and extraordinary: the beauty.
But the place is not only this: it is also harmony, the feeling offered by sincere hospitality, which comes from the joy of welcoming a friend, or a relative, who returns after long periods of absence, is also the local craftsmanship with the various terracotta workshops or olive wood carvers, as well as basket weavers.
Alabaster
When, a few days later, I pass by the diving boat beneath the enormous majesty of Cape Palinuro, I feel tiny within an untouched nature, in a time that in some ways seems to have stopped and left behind the anxiety, tension, and stress of a life that at times is too turbulent.
This is what I was looking for – I think to myself – and with these premises I am now preparing to go and explore the blue depths of this marine area that looks at me, frozen in the centuries and aware of its own harsh beauty, almost as if the maiden Kamaraton were alive again and rising from the myth, renewing her raw beauty.
I choose my destination then: the “Infreschi and Masseta Coast Marine Area”, a stretch of limestone coast that extends into the Cilento Sea and which begins at the end of the Lentiscelle beach up to a few hundred meters from the small village of Scario, where this stretch of coast offers us not only the view, but also a maze of submerged cavities carved out by underground rivers.
In this magical context I draw my attention to the Cave of Santa Maria, which reminds me of a sad and fascinating story at the same time and which I would like to tell here.
My interpreter of local beauty is Paolo Gay, from Turin like me and owner of the Marina di Camerota Diving Center, open every year from April to October.
I've known Paolo for over thirty years: in fact, he may not remember it now, but he was one of the young lifeguards at the pool where I learned to swim in Turin, then retired with the bare minimum, deciding to come and live in this enchanting place after having explored it as an absolute pioneer (underwater) in the 70s and 80s.
Thus, chatting with him under the shade of his diving center's roof, I discovered that a small community of Turin residents had settled here since the mid-70s and that its members gradually opened the first diving centers and other businesses in this fantastic area.
Paolo Gay is a true example of someone who loves his passion, and has turned it into a profession that serves the people who frequent him: scuba diving. This is why I connect with him almost automatically.
A diver since 1968, he attended federal courses which at the time, rather than training students, naturally selected them and thus he learned to manage in any situation.
Today he is a perfect synthesis of experience, ability and passion, which enable him to offer his customers a variety of very long dives capable of truly satisfying everyone.
In general, the caves in this marine area are not suitable for so-called technical diving: first of all because they can mostly be defined as simple marine cavities, often located a few meters deep, well-lit and with wide entrances, secondarily because they are located in areas where, during the high season, it is not easy to find the technical recharging and specific assistance that such dives would require, due to an influx of tourists that forces operators in the sector to concentrate maximum on managing the normal day at sea.
The "cave" we are going to talk about could rightly be defined as such, since it is karst and has a classic river pebble bottom, which is located after a few dozen meters of horizontal penetration starting from the sea in the Marine Protected Area of Marina di Camerota, zone: A, an absolute reserve and which we have access to because we are guided by the only local diving center, that of our friend Paolo.
It was explored by a group of speleologists from Friuli in 1987 who also surveyed it.
It has a wide entrance from the sea, as is often the case in these parts, which is about ten meters deep and is about a hundred meters long in its entire extension.
The peculiarity of this one is given by the significant halocline and thermocline that are encountered during the dive: the latter in particular misleads the less careful divers, as it causes the temperature of the sea water to drop from the initial 22/25°C to the 13°C of the fresh water encountered in the submerged cavity, thus cooling the enthusiasm of the scantily clad divers in a very short time.
In this type of dive, it is essential to have at least two powerful, separate light sources, allowing the diver to enjoy the evocative images of the rocky interiors, nuanced by the meeting of the two waters: the salty water of the sea with the fresh water of erosion from the land above.
Styled Speleological Helmet
This is an opportunity for me to once again put my Styled caving helmet to the test with its powerful lights, as well as the new portable multi-LED torch, which I hand over to my friend and diving companion Marco Ceccarelli, busy as I am with the underwater photography equipment in the various narrow passages of the meander.
The cave itself is accessible to anyone with good diving experience, provided they take due care and have the right equipment.
At the entrance to the cave, Paolo points his lamp at a column of pure alabaster that lights up, thus providing truly evocative transparent images.
At the bottom of the cave, after a series of passages between pinnacles of various shapes, you enter an airy chamber containing concretions descending from above, which join with those that, in times past, when the sea was evidently much further downstream than it is now, arose from below. Here you'll find the famous concretion of stalactites and stalagmites that form a sort of natural statue resembling a Madonna, hence the cave's name.
By raising the light beam and rotating it three hundred and sixty degrees, you can see a long ladder rising upwards, where you can see a hole in the vault in the rock.
So, before continuing, putting the regulator back in my mouth and my head underwater, after taking my photographs, it comes naturally to me to ask Paolo what that wooden ladder is and who placed and used it there in the past. He dismisses me with a few nods, telling me that outside he'll fill me in on the history of the strambaie, who lowered buckets into here to cool off and drink from the fresh, spring water during the grueling hours of work in the sun harvesting the sparta grass. Today, however, the ladder is used by the land guides of the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park to accompany tourists who wish to visit the cave by land.
Weird families
I thus walk through the last intriguing rocky passages of the cave, made more challenging by Paolo's choice to pass through areas not familiar to regular customers, with my innate curiosity in mind: who were these women and what did they do in there with the natural grass they collected?
Thus, during our return to the dinghy, the history of harvesting spartea, a local Mediterranean shrub, resurfaces from the past. This grass, dried and treated, was once used to create libbani or tunnari, braided ropes made from this grass soaked in seawater. The untwisted ropes made from this grass were thus less strong than the hemp ropes used primarily for mussel farming. For this reason, they were called "strambe," and the women who worked them were called strambaie.
Paolo also tells me that on the first of June in the now distant year 1.867, 12 professional women hackney-boatmen and two sailors who were returning from harvesting spartha grass died in a tragic shipwreck in this stretch of sea. They were aboard a fishing boat, perhaps due to an excessive load and a probable rough sea that capsized the vessel.
My mind then spontaneously goes to March 8th, the date on which my daughter was born, but also on which the so-called International Women's Day, which is the commemoration of the tragic death of one hundred and twenty-nine women during the fire that broke out at Cotton in 1908: I think that probably here in front of the cave of Santa Maria there would have been another valid and earlier reason to celebrate a death, mostly of women, at work if someone had ever remembered it and made it public.
Exit from inside
Every year the surviving heirs of those women and some underwater believers celebrate the memory of that episode on the first of June, also laying flowers on the statue of Padre Pio, which Paolo and some of his local fishermen friends placed there in an official ceremony in September 2002.
The images and powerful sensations I experienced in the Santa Maria cave are still vivid in my mind as I gaze upon the enormous walls of the Cilento coast in the Natural Park, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, on my way back to the landing stage of the tourist village where the diving center is located.
I think back to the victims of this forgotten history, which somehow today, from the oblivion of the past, revives the immobility of these rocks, carved by the combined erosive action of salt and fresh water. I confirm my personal impression that certain emotions and sensations, graspable only through a thoughtful underwater dive, are always very difficult to describe to others and to express in a general sense: you have to be there to fully understand.
This is another good reason to come here to discover the underwater life of the extraordinary Cilento and to want to return soon...
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