There are No Straight Roads to Amalfi – The Real Reason Why God Created Barf Bags

Now, having had problems keeping my stomach under me on the straight byways of the New Jersey Turnpike during traffic jams, I had a feeling that making the journey from Naples to Amalfi was going to be the Mount Everest of Car-Sickness travels. For that reason I had considered very strongly driving it myself (it’s hard to be sick when you’re behind the wheel). After all, I had driven across half of Australia passing road-trains (tractor-trailers with 3-5 trailers attached), and through the narrow hedgerows of England - both on the other side of the road. I had driven a 26’ moving truck with a manual transmission from Washington D.C. to Charlotte, N.C. – while sitting on 3 pillows. Come on, how bad could it be?

A good idea, until I saw the reaction my mom and her friend Anna had. They turned pale as ghosts and started peppering me with questions starting with, Are you insane? Do you know how the Italians drive? Do you know how small those roads are? Do you know there are no guard rails (turns out there are)? Question after question convinced me that while I might be an excellent driver, akin to Rain Man, was I really ready to drive on roads that were formerly donkey trails (relatively recently in Italian historical terms) up against German tour buses on the other side? Uh ok, maybe not.

So Katharina arranged for a car to pick me up at the train station in Naples. We flew down the highway dodging through traffic and past Mt. Vesuvius. My driver was a good tour guide who regularly pointed out the sights. I thought – hey if the roads are like this all the way, I’ll be fine. Then we hit the mountains on the way to the coastline. You can’t just go straight up and over - so we started to climb. Corkscrew turn after corkscrew turn for 1.5 HOURS. My stomach made the first 10 of these with no problemo and then completely gave up on the 11th... of 200 (at least) such turns. This is not good.

I tried to figure out what sins I had committed that had damned me to this hellish, Dante-esque road. I did this while desperately holding on with white-knuckled hands to the door handles on each side of the car to minimize the swing, I tried yoga breathing. I tried staring at the horizon but that kept moving (works better on a boat, Dad). I tried praying. I tried to think of a song to get my mind off things, but the only one I could come up with was “Help!” courtesy of the Beatles… which didn’t. I was dying. The last thing I wanted was to be that poor American woman who couldn’t handle the roads of Italy – so I held on for dear life reciting my pseudo-Buddist chant of “Doooon’t get siiiiick. Don’t get siiiiiick.”

Looking in the rear view mirror, the driver noticed the particular shade of green that I was turning. He slowed down. He tried talking to me. He tried pointing out more sites. Nope, sorry, that isn’t going to work. I thought, “Can’t you see I’m concentrating on not getting sick in your car buddy? Just get us off this horrid road. Make it stop. Make it stop.” But I said nothing – just smiled wanly. He was being kind.

After one particularly bad section, I swallowed my pride and told him to pull over immediately. I had to feel solid ground beneath me. Before the car was even stopped I was out of it. He seemed really nervous as I stood leaning on a wall trying to breathe and not heave. I thought he was worried that I might jump just to end this misery, but I later found out he was nervous because of the location of where we pulled over. In my crisis I had made him pull into a cemetery… which in Italy is extraordinarily bad karma for a journey. Frankly, it seemed fairly appropriate to me. Go directly to coffin, do not pass go.

So I climbed back in the car again, and made it for another 15 minutes and had him pull over again. No dead bodies, except for my own zombie form, on this particular stretch. I was embarrassed and apologized that it was taking us so long to get to Amalfi.

He said, “Senorina, please don’t worry. When I was a small boy my family had to pull over every 100 meters and let me out. You’ve done much better than that. You didn’t have milk this morning, did you?”

I said, “No, at least I did one thing right.”

And just like that, I had an epiphany. When I was a kid and having this problem the only thing that worked was for me to be in the FRONT seat, not the back. What an idiot I was. I told him I was riding shotgun for the rest of the trip and like a snap of the fingers, the nausea was gone. I could actually enjoy the beauty around me and it is SPECTACULARLY BEAUTIFUL on that coast. I could have a conversation and just be human – all the way into Amalfi.

When I arrived, I called Katharina and told her that I had just gotten in. I told her how hard the drive was, and that my mom would never have made it regardless of how many “Cheez-It” crackers she ate (our family cure all).

Katharina listened to all of my drama and replied casually, “Oh, I always take sea-sick pills for that trip here.”

Ok, so I’m a moron. So my advice if you go to the Amalfi coast is to stock up on the Dramamine and enjoy the view. Or drive it yourself... You can guess what I'll do next time. If I'm going to die I'd like to be the one at the wheel causing it.