Adventures with my brothers

A bit behind, but the memories are still vivid! All three of my brothers flew in on Friday afternoon and Tom’s wife Vikki joined us later that night.

We had a great time. Saw many friends, went to the mercato at Querceta to get the best roast chicken for our picnic lunch with Jacqueline. Had terrific meals, meter-long pizza in a garden in the hills with John and Anna Kia.

And had a huge adventure at the marble cave. We took the first tour of the day, which turned out to be the last. It was great fun. Then, when the van took the other group back out of the cave, the lights in the cave started to blow out. One after the other and eventually the emergency light went out too. We were in complete darkness, but of course we had our phones. It was very cool to be inside the middle of a mountain. The air was cool and damp. Small point of lights as we moved around.

Eventually the van came back. My seat was a bit wet, hmmm. The woman said it was coming down like a deluge outside. Well, how bad could it be?!

OMG, it could be amazingly bad. The van stopped inside the tunnel and we got out. A wall of water! The dirt parking lot was a lake, no, a river, a flood! Our car was in a lot on a small hill on the other side. One of the women, who drove a Range Rover, wasn’t sure her car could get through the water. I volunteered to bring our car, just hopeful that it would make it.

My hope flagged when I got to the uphill lot and it had 4-5 inches of water. Okay, no more dry feet. The car started up fine and I took it slowly through the flood waters. Charles and the others could sit in the dry. Whew…

Robin and I got the adventure bug and we forced our way across the river. My sandals were pretty marginal but they stayed on okay.

Robin went further up for more shots.

And the others moved the car to a safe place on the side, where they stayed stranded.

But, unlike the Austrian motorcyclist on the tour with us, we could eventually leave. The steep road downhill was swamped with flooding waters but they were only 4-5 inches deep, so the car made it okay. We drove hallway down and then stopped for some photos.