Late that evening in Rome I boarded a very full train headed for southern Italy. I was headed to a cave network to see the “Whitest Cave in the World”. I tried to sleep on the train ride to southern Italy. The train stopped at Caserta at 2:32 AM, where I proceeded to get some shut eye in their train station before continuing onto Castellaneta. As I neared Castellaneta the train began to thin out little by little. Soon there were very few passengers onboard the train. It began to worry me slightly. I noticed we were getting pretty close to the Ocean which made me happy because I had heard this cave was close to the coast. When I finally figured out my stop was next, I gathered my stuff and waited by the door. Once the train stopped I jumped off with one or two others, they both had rides awaiting them. It was after they and the train left that I realized how desolate the train station was. There was barely anything to it. Just two platforms, and a small waiting area. No services and the bathrooms were boarded up. I hung around the station for a few minutes trying to get my bearings, and trying to figure out which way to go.
Lonely Train Station
I then just headed toward where I thought town would be. I walked along a road toward some apartments, and finally started to see a few people here and there. I expected to see a sign pointing me to the caves. This was apparently a famous spot in Italy. Seeing no signs, I tried to ask a woman, in of course, my broken Spanish how to get to the grotto, she said I was close and that it was just a little further. I kept walking and when I still saw no signs I asked an older woman where the grotto was. She didn’t quite understand, so I pulled out my camera to show her the pictures I had taken of the internet site and the address and phone numbers. It clicked! She understood what I was looking for. She said “Ahhhh! You are in Castellaneta! You need Castellana! See Castellaneta” as she pointed to the ground “Castellana” as she pointed to my camera.
Feeling like an idiot I thanked the woman and started heading back to the train station. I took another route to the train station, one that looked a little more direct.
Once back at the train station I called Carmen asking her when the next train would come through. And how I could get to Castellana. She found out and let me know when the train was supposed to arrive. Unfortunately because it was such a small town, there were not too many trains frequenting the area so I had to wait for quite some time in the fairly abandoned train station.
Once the train arrived I hopped on and made my way toward the correct city not too far away luckily.
