It wasn't supposed to be like this. Our "Romantic Couples Private Boat Tour with English Speaking Guide" boat bobbed up and down gently on the cerulean waves as diesel smoke belched across the bow from the police boat we were tethered to.
This was our honeymoon, we were about halfway through and one of the highpoints of the trip was our "Romantic Couples Private Boat Tour with English Speaking Guide". Just the two of us, a grizzled captain, cheerful young local guide, local wine and food and the glorious coastline of Capri for company. Too good to be true, right?
Right. For starters, the grizzled captain and the cheerful young local guide were one and the same, more grizzled than young and his claim to being English speaking was about as robust as me claiming to be able to speak Gujarati because I once ordered a prawn dansak in a curry house in Inverness.
Secondly, we had, perhaps naively, assumed that a private boat tour would have some semblance of privacy. Although the boat itself was exclusively ours, we were to share the Caprese coastline with, seemingly, everyone else in Italy, a good proportion of France, Germany & Switzerland and at least three Americans. There were boats & people everywhere. Tour boats like ours, bigger, almost ferry-like boats, holiday boats, party boats and gigantic super yachts. We had to wait patiently at the entrance to the various grotte along the stunningly pretty coastline, letting other boats out before we could poke the bow of our little boat into the caves.
My wife had done a lot of research beforehand and had quite specific ideas of what she was expecting this tour to entail. We’d seen Instagram posts of people swimming around in grottos and asked, with much gesticulation & very loud, slow English (for all my complaints about our guide not speaking English, to describe my Italian as “basic” would be exceptionally generous) if we could swim at every grotto we came to. At length, we came to a tunnel in a rocky crag and we were granted our long-sought permission to swim. We were to swim through the cleft in the rock and Captain English would meet us on the side, so we gleefully dove into the clear blue water. Like much of this trip, our dip into the Med in the grotto was a little too good to be true. The water was beautiful, but as I splashed my way through the tunnel, a floating pile of detritus ebbed gently in my direction, so close that I nearly got a grubby carrier bag in the face. Upon closer inspection, there was loads of rubbish & plastic washed up on the shore line. My wife and I looked at each other, grimaced and headed for the boat.
The boat was waiting for us as promised. But it wasn’t alone. Alongside it was a sleek, grey, oppressive looking patrol boat, with the ominous words “Guardia di Finanza” on the side. We were quickly hustled out of the water by our captain and he gestured that he was very sorry, and we would be five minutes, it’s just a documentation thing, ok? Bene. Clemmie and I exchanged worried looks again and took a seat on the deck.
The Guardia di Finanza, or Financial Guard, is a kind of combination between the tax authorities & the coastguard, and they patrol the Italian coast looking to crack down on smuggling & tax evasion. And honeymooning couples, apparently. We waited for an age with the financial fuzz and when we were finally sent on our way, our guide only had 30 minutes to get us back to Capri port before his next tour. There would be no more swimming, no lunch, no wine and no access to the famous blue grotto, which had been guaranteed by the tour operator when we booked. As we skirted past the blue grotto, we saw a wooden footbridge jutting out of the rockface.
“Mira, mira!” barked Il Capitano. “La Grotta Azzura”, he pointed excitedly at the shore. We wouldn’t be able to get into the grotto, as you needed to buy tickets separately to access the caves proper. It seemed, for we were getting rather adept at sign language now, that in better conditions, and with more time, we would surreptitiously stop near a small cave near the grotto & swim through a partially submerged tunnel to get into the Grotto without the inconvenience of buying tickets, queuing or any of that other rigmarole. I was starting to see why the Guardia di Finanza were so interested in our friend.
As we approached the dock in Capri, we were hurried ashore and given a plastic bag with two sandwiches a bottle of white wine. Our captain had to return to the police boat, and we were starving. We walked the length of the dock back to the main marina and, having tried and failed to find a corkscrew in any of Capri’s uniquely tatty market stalls, sat on the wall and ate our sandwiches. Glumly.
Prior to arriving in Capri, we had treated ourselves to a night at the Mezzatorre Spa Resort on Ischia. We’d been through the hustle & bustle of Rome, had a long, rather nerve-jangling car journey from Rome to Naples and stayed in a smart suite in a hotel in the Neapolitan ghetto. The Mezzatorre was our moment of luxury.
Having arrived at the port of Ischia via the ferry from Naples, we hopped into a tiny little taxi to the isolated resort at the Mezzatorre. Alone on a peninsula overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Mezzatorre is set in a castle that was originally built to spot Barbary pirates. Nowadays, the tower is home to the swankier rooms in the resort, while smaller chalet style rooms across the grounds hold the more standard rooms. The lower end rooms give the resort a Butlins-cum-Centre-Parcs feel, which is immediately dispelled upon entering the room. Although small, our room was marvellously well appointed, immaculately clean and with a bed big enough to land a helicopter on. The bathroom is stocked with complementary salves & unguents that Mrs Halligey found very exciting but were somewhat wasted on me. Any further hints of holiday camps evaporate upon sitting down in the restaurant. The food is to die for, and we ate and drank like heroes.
The problem with these luxury resorts is that we get bored rather quickly. As idyllic as it is to sit by a beach and be brought Aperol spritz while sitting in the sun, my limit on indolence is about 12 hours, 24 at an absolute maximum. So as our time at the Mezzatorre neared its end, Mrs Halligey decided we must go to the spa for “treatments”. To my sheltered mind, “treatment” is either the name of Millwall’s hooligan firm or what terrifying men in white coats did in 1920s “asylums”. Clemmie had booked us in for a Hot Lemon Scrub & a couple’s massage, so we donned our towelling robes and padded on to the spa. My expectation had been that both the massage and the scrub would be done as a couple, so I was in some distress when we wheeled into separate cells for our treatment. I had never done this before. I was told to undress and I was handed a polythene sachet containing some paper pants. The masseuse told me to put the pants on and left me to it. I stripped off and unwrapped the pants. They looked like pants, with a larger butt section & a smaller front, but upon closer inspection, had clearly been designed by someone with only the faintest idea of what male genitalia look like. I slipped into the pants and confirmed my suspicions. I was clearly far too much man for these Italian types. I’ll spare you the grizzly details, but my modesty was not preserved by the paper pants. It was as if my todger was wearing an apron that was made during the time of fabric rationing. I gave myself the once over, trying to make sure that I was a decent as possible, concluding in the meantime that the new Mrs Halligey was evidently very spoiled.
The masseuse returned and I was given the hot lemon scrub. There were a few awkward moments where I had to roll over or adjust my position, taking great care not to startle the poor woman with my fearsome gonad and then I was showered off and led back to where Clemmie was waiting, clad thankfully in my towelling robe and swimming shorts.
As we were preparing for out couple massage, out on a promontory overlooking the bay, I told Clemmie about my struggles with pants.
“Really?!” Clemmie asked, cocking an eyebrow. She had never been one to spare my ego and seemed surprised by my sudden masculine superiority. We were each handed another pair of the hateful pants and as the masseuses left us to change, the lady who had administered my Lemon Scrub said “it’s a Tanga. The big bit goes at the front.” I turned beetroot red as Clemmie’s raucous laughter rang out across the bay.
To be continued…
