It was only a matter of time before one of us ended up bleeding....

We are in San Agnello, Italy right now. We are about two kilometers west of Sorrento, one of the most beautiful places in the world. Yesterday, we went on a boat tour of the Gulf of Naples and the island of Capri.
Capri is hands down one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. The entire island is a massive piece of limestone just sticking out of the ocean. It is a lot like Hawaii, just with a rocky beach and not as jungle like. To put it in perspective, real estate is $18,000 per square foot on Capri. Yes, per square foot. Needless to say, it is really nice. But, now on to the bloodshed.

Our boat tour included cliff jumping and cave diving. We spent a while jumping off of a forty five foot cliff, which was a blast. I've discovered that this is just the right distance for a person to have fully formed thoughts and ponder wonders of the universe while falling like a sack of rocks into the open ocean. Even though we had to wait a half hour for one of the Canadian girls to jump from a twenty foot cliff, it was still fun. Sadly, our guide would not let us jump from the ninety foot cliff. I am still kind of mad about that.
From the cliffs we went around to different caves that you have to swim into. The cool thing about this is that each cave produces a different color based on the type of coral and algae that grows on the rocks below you. When you first swim in, it just looks dark, but once you have turned around the light bounces off the bottom and turns the water a vivid color. It was an otherworldly effect, much like something out of a bad movie set. There is a white cave, a green cave, and the blue grotto which is supposedly world famous even though we'd never heard of it.
After seeing the white cave, our guide, Captain Augustino (I think he deemed himself a captain...) told us that if you swim down under a rock wall, you can come up on the other side into another small but very cool cave.

At this point, I need to digress for a second. I had always heard coral refered to as being razor sharp, and I never really believed it. I mean, its coral for hell's sake, how can it be razor sharp? Well, its true. But anyways...

So I went to swim under the coral covered limestone wall. I'm not sure if the captain pointed me in slightly the wrong angle, or what, but either way I didn't make it. I swam under the wall, and when I came up to surface, rather than hitting air, I promply ran the top of my head into a bunch of coral where two rocks formed an inverted V. This wasn't quite the worst part though. There was no air in the crevace that my head was almost lodged in. So, after shouting obscenities that probably offended many conservative fish, I realized I was now stuck under very sharp rocks, with no air in my lungs, and I didn't entirely know where I was supposed to be going. Rather than try to make it to the other side, I decided to go back. Seeing as I was slightly knocked stupid, bleeding a bit from my head, and kind of freaking out, I was swimming frantically back. In the process, I dragged my back along several feet of coral before I got to the surface. When I got back to the boat, we washed the blood out of my hair and off my back. My back now looks like I got clawed by an angry animal, and I have three goose eggs on my head and one small jagged cut. And all I wanted was to see the damn cave!
But, once we were sure that I wasn't going to die, we went to a few more caves and the blue grotto. (and just for the record, three hours of salt water in fresh cuts doesn't feel too great)
The blue grotto was the last cave that you normally have to pay to enter, but we got there late enough that the patrol was gone. It is about 25 yards square, and when you get inside the light and coral creates the most incredible electric blue color I have ever seen. I had no idea that nature can produce such intense colors with so much depth and vibrancy. I really don't think that any camera could do that place justice. It was such an incredible experience to be in there.

Also, James and I both now understand the rationale behind siestas. It is almost hot beyond description in Italy in the middle of the day. It feels like someone has just soaked a blanket in extremely hot water, and then wraps you up in it and laughs the whole time. But hey, we can't complain too much, we are in Italy :)