Positano --> Ancona

Positano - The Beginning of our Journey

The Drive

Croatia always seemed like a tough place to get to. While I was planning this segment of my trip it was surprisingly hard to find inexpensive flights; even for expensive flights the dates were a bit sporadic and unpredictable. The group and I planned a ferry from Ancona and so we had to travel from P

ositano to Ancona. Whoever did the research on this missed a pretty key piece of information, namely the distance from Positano to Ancona. Google maps suggests a 6 hour drive but we heard everything from 5 hours to 8 hours when speaking with locals.

The Drive

We left our hostel in Positano at about 10am to get a bus to Sorrento where we had arranged to rent a car from Hertz. After waiting for about 20 minutes after the scheduled arrival time we decided to ask someone why the bus was taking so long. We found a traffic officer and learned that the bus would not be coming for another hour because of a transit strike across Italy (naturally it would occur on this day). Our ferry was scheduled to leave Ancona at 7:30 and so

we had just over 9 hours to get from Positano to Ancona. Running out of time, we hopped into a cab with two other tourists who were also trying to get to a place just past Sorrento. After a windy 45 minutes we passed Sorrento and unfortunately the cab driver misunderstood our instructions and drove to drop off the other two tourists before us. After dropping them off we headed back towards Hertz in Sorrento and, after the driver got lost brieftly, we arrived at our first destination. We were coming up on t-8 hours now and rushed into Hertz. We were then informed that Hertz had some computer problems and lost our reservation. After sorting that out we rushed through the paperwork and handed over our license. I gave mine in but unfortunately it was expired...next up was one of the other people I was travelling with and she handed her license over. Hertz then proceeded to inform us that they do not rent to people

under the age of 23 (slight oversight by the organizing committee). This was our first moment of despair

After recovering from the knowledge that we had to car and only about 7.5 hours to make the 5-8 hour drive we began problem solving. In the end we learned that Avis does rent to 22 year olds and so we rushed out to find a cab to Avis (which is located on the other side of town). Once there we went through more paperwork and they told us that they only had a Fiat left. Mark went down to check out the car and noticed that it was shockingly small...there was no way we could fit 4 people and 4 backpacks (plus day bags) into this thing; Moment of despair number 2. Fortunately for us the manager remembered a Ford just in time. We signed everything with about 7 hours to go and jumped in. I was elected the driver even though it was under another persons name because I had the most experience driving standard...lucky me :s.

On the way out of the parking lot I started the trip off right by stalling across two lanes. With Italians approaching fast on either side I quickly pulled the car back together and jolted into the correct lane; good thing they drive on the right side of the road here.

Sorrento to Napoli

We drove along the winding roads from Sorrento through many construction zones and behind ever slower contingents. It took us about a 45 minutes to get to Napoli and from there we got onto the A1. As we watched the clock tick away the minutes we got increasingly more and more stressed. I was just trying to focus on keeping a good clip without endangering anyone else. We were trying to drive with traffic initially at about 150kmh and watched as several cars

wizzed by at about 160kmh. For a while we were trying to figure out whether the signs were in mph or kmh since they all said 80 and traffic seemed to be going ridiculously fast for the signs to be in kmh.

Napoli - Ancona

Once I settled in we found a comfortable average of about 160kmh and began to notice quite abrupt changes in the speed of traffic every 10 or 15 minutes before speeding back up. After the second or third time this happened Mark and I noticed speed cameras which just so happened to correspond exactly with the 40% reduction in speed; hopefully those first few don't result in a ticket....

We sped up towards Roma and then onto Florence before getting off the major highway. Once on secondary highways we stopped once for a quick snack and toilette break before moving onwards. We were only lost once before finding a sign for Ancona. Once on this road we raced through tunnels and onto the final straight away (the road into Ancona sufficiently straight to meet this cliche). We arrived at the Airport with a full hour before our ferry, dropped the car, and then went to look for a taxi. Our last moment of despair (third time's the charm) occurred here when for about 15 minutes there were no taxi's and the phone line to the local taxi company failed to provide any value. Finally a lone taxi pulled up and we pilled in for the 20 minute drive. The driver informed us that we had to actually check in at a different locatio

n than the port thus constraining our remaining time even further. It should be noted though that there are really nice fields of sunflowers on the way into Ancona.

We made it to check-in, registered, and then rushed towards the port. Finally after clearing customs (Croatia is not in the EU yet - not till 2011) we clamored through the door to our port and into the ferrry; we made it with 20 minutes to spare.

The View from our Ferry

(about the time our friends were getting into port)

Our friends

Unfortunately the other half of our contingent was not quite so lucky. They had elected to take a ferry from Positano to Sorrento, missed the ferry, took a later than planned connecting train to Rome, didn't catch the planned train from Rome to Ancona, and finally arrived in Ancona to watch our ferry sail out of the port...quite unfortunate. They were able to make a ferry the next day but at considerable personal expense.

The Ferry

Our trip overnight ferry was quite pleasant and uneventful after our previous days experience. We got to Split early on the morning of July 11th.

Morning in Split Harbor