Pescara, Bari, Brindisi - Italy

A smart move while hitchhiking is to keep an eye on traffic traveling in the other direction. Sometimes a driver will do a u-turn and come back to pick you up. And it's an even smarter move to decline the ride.

Hitching with my friend Mary Lynne from Rome to Pescara, I noticed a white, compact car slow down on the busy highway, the driver craning his neck out his side window to get a better look at us because he was on the other side of the highway going the other way.  When the road was clear, he made a u-turn and stopped beside us. He was in his thirties and a woman with bright, punked-out red hair was sitting next to him.

In broken English he asked where we were going. ''Pescara.'  He waved and said okay, okay, okay.  'We take you there,' he said.  Mary Lynne and I discussed whether to take the ride of not, or rather, I earnestly tried to convince her we didn't want to go because why are people turning around on the highway to pick us up?  We got in the car.

We protested the return to sweltering Rome, it had taken us forever to get out of the city, but they continued until we arrived at a hair salon where we sat with our bags for about an hour while they argued with two others, occasionally pointing at us. What was going on? When I tried to break into their conversation, they looked at me like I had crawled out of an ice floe, so I picked up my bag, looked at Mary Lynne and said,  'This is stupid.'

What did they want? I never knew, and they chased us as we ran out the door and down the street. Best not to climb into any car that has made a u-turn to pick you up, or you'll get stuck in a place you had no intention of going, or you'll be dead. End of story.

We finally made it to Pescara, where we slept on the beach for the night. It's easy to find a place to unroll your sleeping bag if you stay outside of town. 

In Bari, the Luparelli family put us up for a few days, friends of Mary Lynne who were kind enough to offer us a place to stay. The heat was phenomenal, I couldn't breath for the humidity and at 1:00 pm everyday at the peak of this oppressive heat, the family ate their main meal with red wine, a huge Italian spread of pastas and breads and meats that the aunts and grandmother spent the morning preparing in the kitchen. Dressed in black, they spent the day in the kitchen, like crows huddled around the stove. I gained weight, I couldn't walk after eating and the father would point at the food and say 'eat more, have more.'  I usually staggered to the bedroom to lie down after lunch.  Luckily, we only stayed three days.

We said our tearful goodbyes to the Luparellis (yes, after three days they had that much impact) and then hitched to Brindisi, a beautiful seaside city, where we camped out for one night before taking the ferry to Corfu. Greece!