spicy south

Briatico, Calabria, Italia

We arrived 2 days ago in Briatico, Calabria, a small barely paved beach town where it is never not hot and the water is as perfect as any travel brochure of the carribean. It seems like a really poor place, a lot of the houses are really run down and a lot of the old people don't have teeth. But everyone we've met is extremely happy, laughs a lot, is really into family, is exraordinarily generous and very hospitable and willing to go out of their way to show us a good time. The work here is easy. We work however much we want, whenever we want, and it involved taking care of tomatoes or cutting twigs of oregano and putting them into bags.

The food is lots of spicy, lots of tomatoes and pasta pasta pasta. Our new friend antonello (large frame, huge smile, dark skin and greasy jet black hair, number 10 of 17 siblings) drives us to secret beach spots that only he is allowed to go to because he knows people who know people, takes us to meet his family, buys us gelato and beer and anything we want, and screams at the top of his lungs to techno music as we wind around the hair-pin turns on the cliff above the sea. He showed us a lot of pictures of him slaughtering a pig and making salami WHILE we were eating that very same salami from that very same pig. He laughed in my face when i told him i was a vegetarian. But he is pretty much always laughing, if he's not cursing or talking on the phone to one of his ten brothers about how he is driving in the car with two beautiful girls from california. He is a lot of fun, a real gem who we are very lucky to have found. Tonight we are making pesto from basil from our garden and pine nuts from his yard.