Experiencing the Blue Grotto in Capri

My first visit to Capri was in September of 2000. We were staying in an apartment in Rome and had taken the train down to Naples for the day. Our goal wasn’t to spend much time in Naples, but rather to experience the island of Capri and all of its character and beauty. Capri sits off the coast of Italy in what is known as the Tyrrhenian Sea – part of the Mediterranean which is bordered by Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the mainland of Italy.

We took a rocking-and-rolling ferry ride to the island and went about the business of exploring. The biggest attraction on the island, and the primary thing I wanted to see was the Blue Grotto. Unfortunately the seas were too rough and the Blue Grotto was closed.

Returning again to Capri in 2006, we were happy to learn that the Grotto was open and we went straight there. We didn’t want to take the chance that conditions might change.

The Blue Grotto is a unique cave-like impression in the side of a stone cliff, with a vertical opening to the sea. Only the very top of that opening is above the water, so the cave is dark except for this incredible blue light which gives the Blue Grotto it’s name. Once you pass through this tiny opening above the surface, you enter a large “room” with a high ceiling. The sun’s rays shine on the water outside, through underwater openings, and onto the white limestone floor of the grotto – this is where the Blue Grotto’s illumination comes from.

We took a taxi to the location and descended a cliff-hugging staircase to sea level. Other folks were there from different parts of the world, and we waited in line for our turn – all the while watching the boats and the men who rowed them.

The boatmen at the Blue Grotto have a unique style of rowing which involves standing, facing forward, and rowing with both oars. It’s a bit like the Venetian style known as “valesana” but in Capri they don’t cross their oars, and the oars are fastened to the rails so the boatmen can let go from time to time without losing them.  I'm sure some of my readers know plenty about this style of rowing. Once in the grotto, some of them continue to row while seated on a thwart. The boats are little, maybe 10 or 12 feet long and many have the same color scheme. In truth they resemble old-fashioned lifeboats more than any other craft. These little rowboats are all over the place, there’s at least one large boat with a sunshade in this floating mess that seems to lack any order. Someone might show up in their own large vessel and rowboats will go over and take them to the grotto. Large tour boats also come by with plenty of passengers – hungry for the Blue Grotto experience. It seems pretty out of control at first but by the time you get to the bottom of the stairs, you’ve seen enough to recognize the order of things.

Right then, some barefoot guy rows over with a big smile and an empty boat.
He tells you to get in, how to get in, and what order to get in. The surge of the Tyrrhenian Sea makes boarding the boat a challenging and sometimes wet affair. Your boatman rows around to the big boat with the sunshade, and everyone in your boat gets to buy a ticket. After buying the tickets, your boatman circles around, jokes loudly with some of the other boatmen, and seems to just be aimlessly rowing. Then you see more little boats coming out of the grotto and you realize that he and all the other boatmen were waiting for the last group of boats to come out of the grotto.
Now it’s time to enter the most famous cave on the island. As your boatman approaches the opening, he is telling you in a heavy Italian accent, to lie down, as flat as you can, “NO, FURTHER! STILL FURTHER DOWN!” You feel like a human pancake on the log ride at an amusement park. The opening is right in front of you and you understand now what all the fuss was about – it’s a tiny little crack! You think to yourself “no way, there’s no way we’re gonna fit through that”. Right about then your boatman grabs hold of a chain which feeds through that tiny crack, and with an Italian “heave-ho” between waves, you’re through.

Now, all that craziness of prepping for and getting through the crack is replaced by a dark calm place which is illuminated by an indescribable blue light. I could spend a paragraph or two trying to describe the blue light that makes the Blue Grotto famous, but I could never do it justice.

I’d have to have a much better camera to capture the true blue hue inside.

Once in the grotto, your boatman rows you around in wide circles, tells you a little about it, and some of the boatmen sing Neapolitan songs like “O Sole Mio” and “Santa Lucia”. Being a gondolier, I couldn’t resist singing my own “Santa Lucia”, which surprised some boatmen, and probably irritated others.

After your visit to the grotto, your boatman brings you back through the tiny opening and back into the world. He pulls the boat next to the same platform you boarded from, you tip him, and you make your way up the hill again, probably to sample far too many different types of Limoncello before buying a few bottles and stumbling back onto the ferry that brought you to the island.

Greek Cave-Boating Part 3 - A Squeeze and a Song

Like many cave-boating locations, the Melissani Cave waterway isn’t very big – this one is around 160 meters long by 40 meters wide.

Nevertheless, they still call it a “lake”.
Several excavations have taken place in this unique location. Most of the artifacts unearthed, date back to the third and fourth centuries BC.

Artifacts found often point to the existence of a religious cult there that revolved around the Greek god “Pan”.

Statues of female “Nymphs” have also been found there, resulting in the cave also being called the “Cave of the Nymphs”.

A lone boatman approaches to pick up passengers.

This boatman was either holding a camera or lighting someone's cigarette, I'm not really sure which it was.

Melissani boats approach the dock with passengers to offload.

There’s an island to one side, which we had to squeeze our boat past to enter the covered portion of the cave.

The covered portion with it's small island overgrown with foliage.

Approaching the "squeeze" from under the covered area. Notice the rope attached to the wall so the boatman can pull his boat along.

As the boatman pulls the vessel through the "squeeze", everyone takes photos and video of the aperture...

...including me!

Other passengers in our boat learned that I was some sort of “gondolier” and asked me to sing. As I thought it over, and my kids pushed me to do so, it became clear that if I didn’t – the folks in the boat would think I was an awful dad.
Most of the passengers seemed to like the song, and more importantly, the boatman took notice and motioned for me to stand up and row.

Without hesitation, I jumped up and began to row.

photo by Elisa Mohr

This was a fairly wide boat, and the oars were so worn that they hardly had any paddle surface to speak of, but with no wind or current, they worked just fine.

Someone cried out “sing another song!”.
I couldn’t pass up the chance.

video by Elisa Mohr

And for a few minutes, I was an American tourist, rowing like a “Greek cave boatman” singing like a Venetian Gondolier, and truly,
Loving life.

Then I sat down, let the guy dock his own boat, and after the others had disembarked, I showed him my appreciation…with a handshake and a big fat tip!

Passengers disembark.

As I was headed back up through the tunnel, I turned around to get one more shot, and found that our boatman had once again parked his boat out in the middle of the lake.

All was quiet again.

Greek Cave-Boating Part 2 - Quay and Away

Walking down the sloped corridor at the Melissani Cave(which was more of a diagonal mine-shaft than anything else), we arrived at the quay and surveyed the place.


video by Elisa Mohr

As you might expect, I was determined to not only ride in the boat, but to row the boat as well.
My family and I waited until the present boat, which had a load of people in it already, had shoved off.

Then, as soon as the next guy rowed over, I had a brief conversation with him, decided that he was the most easy-going of the group, and asked him if we could ride with him and if I could try rowing the boat. He looked like he was on the fence about it, then my wife told him I was a good rower and my two daughters chimed in cheerfully. I don’t know who was most convincing, but he nodded, and said something about rowing “later”.

video by Elisa Mohr

The cave there is half covered, half open.
The locals say that for the longest time it was an unknown cavern and then some say the roof fell in during an earthquake. Other islanders claim that it had been open for five thousand years, but the obscuring trees kept people from finding it. A cave of the same description was mentioned in a book by Dr. Joseph Partsh in 1890. The Melissani Cave was rediscovered in 1951. The entrance tunnel was made and the cave officially opened in 1963.

Once they found it, and the tunnel entryway was excavated, not long after, someone thought it might be fun to put a boat in there. I wonder if any of my readers here can identify with that.

In the middle of the day, when the sun is overhead, the rays of sunlight hit the water directly, illuminating the stone floor of the lake – turning the water amazing shades of turquoise and deep royal blue.

As the lake is only disturbed by a few guys with rowboats, the water stays clear – clear enough to see all the way to the deepest point – some one hundred feet ( 39 meters) below.

As we boarded, a few other people showed up and climbed in too. Our “gondolier” rowed us into the center of the lake and directed our attention to the “aperture” above, which is ringed by trees of the surrounding forest.

Among the many unique features of this location, is the atmosphere within; it could be scorching hot and oppressively dry as you walk across the parking lot to buy your tickets and enter, but by the time you reach the water, you’ve cooled down. The cave and the crystal water of the lake have a remarkable regulating effect on the air inside. Breathing in the cool damp air was refreshing. Our boatman informed us that some of the stalactites were as much as 20,000 years old.

The tour concludes tomorrow – remain seated please.

Greek Cave-Boating Part 1 - Intro and Entry

Some time ago, Sean Jamieson and I were talking about the Gondola Blog and he said:
"So basically you just go places, row boats, and write about it".
This wasn't exactly the way I'd envisioned the whole thing.
It seemed to downplay the significance of things.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was pretty much right.

I go places, row boats, and write about it.

Not very important, but not a bad deal either.
It's pretty darn fun, and as a gondolier, there aren't that many things I'd rather be doing.

So how does a guy who "goes places, rows boats, and writes about it" come up with a plan?
Yes, sometimes I put a lot of thought into it, say to myself: "I need to go to such-and-such-place, find the gondola I've heard about and row".

Sometimes I have to talk my wife and family into stuff.
Quite often, my wife (who is a travel agent) will say something like:
"Hey Greg, wanna go to (insert any random place here)?"

And I'll reply with either:
"Oh, yeah! Hey, we could visit the gondola that operates there."

…or simply:
"Are there gondolas there?" Either way, she will roll her eyes, and remind herself that she's a "Gondola Widow", and then count her blessings that I'm not hopelessly obsessed with Ferraris, gambling, or other women.

And while there are times when I build a trip around what I call "gondola tourism", or squeeze a visit to a boat operation into an existing trip, there are also times when something will just fall into my lap.
Such was the case with the Melissani Cave.

The Melissani Cave is rather dificult to find, but with a good local taxi driver, who knows the area, you can find it.

We arrived on shore at Argostoli, the capital city of the Greek island of Kefalonia.
This was the third Greek port we'd visited on the cruise we took after Vogalonga, and aside from finding the best gyros on the island for lunch, I had little on my agenda for the day.

Then I heard about these rowing boats that gave a tour through caves.

Sound like something that would interest a gondola fanatic?
Oh yeah!

We talked to a few different cab drivers, found one who had a good command of the English language, and made a deal.

We drove across the island to the town of Sami, traveled a few kilometers further to Karavomylos, and ended up at the receiving area of the operation.

After buying tickets (7 euro for adults, 4 euro for kids), we followed a staircase down that brought us to the top of a diagonal corridor - at the end of which we could see the turquoise water of the cave and boats crossing in and out of view.

This wasn't my first "underground boat ride", we'd done this type of thing a few years back in Kentucky (see part one and part two), and of course the Blue Grotto in Capri was a highlight of a vacation to Napoli in 2006 (read my post from Jan. 3rd of '08).

Like Napoli, the boatmen stand and row with two oars, in a forward-facing position. It’s not unusual, really – I’ve even seen some guys do it in California.

Here’s a video clip of our entry into the location:


video by Elisa Mohr

In my next post we'll take a look at what's at the end of the tunnel.

LOST RIVER CAVE – part 2

In my last post, I described the underground boat operation in Bowling Green, Kentucky known as Lost River Cave. I got curious about the boats there, so I called and spoke again with Annie Holt; she’s the Operations Supervisor. I found out that the boats in the Lost River Cave originally took passengers in Mammoth Cave, about 30 miles north.
Mammoth Cave is over 350 miles long, with a number of subterranean rivers running through different areas. The Echo River is one of those rivers and until the early 90’s, there were boat tours given there. The boat tours were discontinued for reasons including environmental impact and cost to operate in a passage which can flood frequently.
The tour boats sat in Mammoth Cave until Nick Crawford, founder of the Friends of Lost River, secured them for the operation in Bowling Green.
The boats are 23 feet long and 4 feet 8 inches wide. They can seat 20 passengers and stand about a foot above the waterline, allowing the tour guide to take his or her passengers under some pretty low-hanging rocks.
Annie Holt told me that when they went to remove the boats from Mammoth Cave, they had to be cut into six-foot sections and carried out, piece-by-piece from 350 feet below the surface. Once out of the cave, the boats were welded back together and launched in the Lost River Cave waterway.
What do they do when the motor fails? They hardly ever have such problems because they maintain things quite well (I would too if I operated boats in a cave). In case there is a motor failure, each boat has a long pole (for punting) and if all else fails, tour guides are willing and able to jump in the water and pull the boat back to dock. The water is about 3 feet deep in most of the cave.

Here's a photo I took during our trip into the cave. This boat was docked and waiting at the mouth of the cave.

Special thanks go out to Rho Lansden, Annie Holt, and Steve O’Nan for providing the above information.

LOST RIVER CAVE - part 1

Last week I was on vacation in Bowling Green, Kentucky with my family. We were planning on a nice day “outside”, but then we awoke to rain – a ridiculous amount of it. So what do you do in Central Kentucky when it’s raining cats and dogs? You go caving. At least that’s what the girl at the desk of our hotel suggested. We’d already seen the “Diamond Caverns” the day before, but there was another cave that I’d wanted to check out since I’d first learned about it a few days previous: the “Lost River Cave”. Caves are cool, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the cave that drew me to this place. It was the boats. I’ve been in the boat business for almost 15 years. My wife and I have worked in almost all areas of boat tours, but we’ve never handled anything that literally goes underground. The Lost River Cave is a cave tour where you get to ride a boat in a river that flows underground. It’s a “young cave” so there aren’t huge stalactites hanging from the ceiling, but the place really is amazing. Our guide Ryan Stidham was terrific. I’ve spent a long time concentrating on what makes a good gondolier and this guy gave a great tour. Sure, he wasn’t rowing on the back of a boat built in Venice out of eight different kinds of wood, but he was great. He gave a funny, yet informative tour, knew all there was to know about the waterway, and handled the boat like a pro. I’m sure that if he ever wanted to, he could do well in the gondola business. The boats they use in the cave are aluminum, and powered by a trolling motor. Many gondolas in America are strictly rowed but there are several that run on trolling motors. The Lost River Cave operation pushes their boats around using Motor Guide equipment. The interesting modification they’ve made is that the trollers they use are reversed. My guess is that they put a higher priority on having the ability to reverse out of a situation. It’s a unique scenario: no crosswinds, no vaporetti or big yachts plowing through, just a boat, with a dozen people on it and a driver who gives an interesting tour. Oh, and yes, there were a few bats hanging from the ceiling, but nobody got pooped on.

Thanks to Rho Lansden and Annie Holt for providing the above image.