It was beautiful and sunny this morning at Porto Cesareo. An old fishing person brought his boat in quite close to our parking place while we were having breakfast. He didn't catch any fish either! Reluctantly we left and travelled north up the coast to the City of Taranto. Ann had written some postcards to her grandchildren so she decided to visit the Post Office in Taranto to buy 4 stamps. This involved one and a half hours queuing followed by about ten minutes form filling and double checking with colleagues. This is not an overestimate! The Italian State clearly has some quite serious problems at present.

From Taranto we travelled west and over the border from Puglia into Basilicata and to the town of Mantera.

This place is absolutely mind blowing.

The town is built on one side of a very deep gorge.

The bottom layer of the town consists of artificially created caves which were used as dwellings until the 1960s when the people living there were forcibly evicted and moved to high rise blocks on the outskirts of town!

The "new" town is built above and to the side of the old cave dwellings. Until the mid twentieth century the area was riddled with malaria and the population lived in abject poverty begging anyone foolhardy enough to visit not for cash but for quinine!

We are staying on the other side of the gorge from the town at the Parco della Murgia Materana. The camper area is in an abandoned 19th Century Farm on a high plateau. Nearby is the Park reception which is housed in a former fortified sheep fold. Life was hard round here in the past quite clearly. There are many archaeological sites nearby on the plateau which we hope to visit tomorrow.