One day, while we were in Calabria, I proposed to Mary to go for an off-road trip, towards some amazing places on the mountains of Calabria, close to Reggio Calabria where we were based.
The supposed trip was going to be this one:
Click Here to see on Google maps
Starting from Reggio Calabria:
- Gallicianò
- Roghudi
- Drake Rock
- “Africo Vecchio” (Old Africo)
Back to Reggio Calabria.
When I told to Mary’s father about this trip, he said:
Michele, that’s very dangerous. If you are going, you are going with me!
As in the past I had to argue on another topic where I thought he was too much conservative, this time I decided to let it go and accept his guidance as he has served decades as a forest ranger so if he said that, probably, he really meant that.
So we started the trip!
First step, of course, a café to get some great croissants to make sure that our sugar level did not go under dangerous thresholds.
Source: Author. Me and Mary cheering with the croissants
Gallicianò is a very small village with less than 200 inhabitants in the middle of Aspromonte, which is a big chain of mountain close to Reggio Calabria which is a National Park.
Here is a view of the village and on top, you can hardly see the amphitheatre, from the following picture.
Source: Author. The village from the church upwards.
Source: Author. The village from the top to the Church
This village is from Greek origins and that’s why the presence of this amphitheatre and of the orthodox church.
This below is the only Catholic church of the village, with me, looking around to stalk someone asking for opening the church. And I also managed to do it :D
Here a picture from a street where the name was both in Italian and Greek. It’s said that this mountain area is the last one in Italy where Greek is still spoken as a current language.
And here the area where women used to was the clothes and laundry in the old hand-washer, with the big soap-tablets and much efforts.
These are not functioning any more but they are conserved very well, like they were in that very age where they were fully used.
And now, let’s move forward to the next step, which was Roghudi. Well, wait, we had some kind of traffic here :D
A group of goats was moving on the road so we waited a little bit there. The picture is taken quite in a hurry as people here totally do not like to be photographed.
And after one hour of driving more, due to the bad conditions of the road, we reached Roghudi, which is a ghost town, completely abandoned, with no people living there.
The reason was a big flood in 1971 that caused a lot of problems, dangers and deaths and the Major issued a commandment that everybody had to leave the village. A few anyway remained but another big flood occurred in 1973 when everybody left. Instead of one guy, that died in 2013, that lived there until the end. His house is open, like all the others, and it’s the best conserved among the ruins.
This village is now populated just by donkeys and goats. Some leftovers are quite unmistakable :D
So here was my first friend from Roghudi
Here some pictures of the ruins
Here is the last guy from the village. Still some pictures and leftovers in his house
A small abandoned church
While descending the ruins the silence was heavy. I could just hear the sound of my steps drifting here and there.
I was admiring the view on the dry river when I heard a sound.
At first I got quite scared as I thought that some bad presence (bandits or predator) could appear. So I moved extremely silently, trying to understand who was there. After looking into the closest house I felt touched for such surprise.
There were two senior and two baby donkeys! I tried to get close to them, giving something fresh to eat but they were too used to loneliness so I could not manage to touch them.
After this nice encounter, we headed towards the Drake Rock, a very ancient stone with very strange incisions.
If you watch carefully, you will see me on the bottom right of the rock :D
The last step of our trip has been Africo Vecchio. This place can be reached just by 6 kilometres of an off-road way, quite bumpy and with no internet connection. Here Mary’s father could lead us as he knew very well the route.
This place is a hidden village in the middle of nowhere, where ndrangheta members used to keep the seized people waiting for the payment of the ransom. Anyway, I was not aware of this detail that Mary’s father told me just when we were on the way there. And I got even more curious.
Even if this village should be abandoned, some houses were ruined while others were very carefully barricaded with iron slabs to close windows and doors. We found a person there, I greeted him. He just moved his head and kept his eyes on me checking all the movements I was making. So as soon as I ended my trip, Mary’s father suggested us to go as it seemed like we were not welcome there.
So here is a picture taken from internet as I felt that taking pictures there was not appreciated.
Source: https://www.paesifantasma.it/Paesi/africo.html
This year, we took several trips on the mountains close to Reggio Calabria and I liked it a lot! Gong to the sea is nice but changing routes is even more funny!