Driving the scenic costal road

We drive out of Otranto on the southern part of the Italian heel and we go south – yeah we are almost at the end of Italy but there is a bit of road still further south of here. The roads down here is pretty quiet – there isn’t a lot of people driving on the roads in the deep south of Italy – I guess the population down here is pretty limited since there is better economic opportunities north of this area.

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We don’t see many cars but so we can enjoy the coast line which has some strange looking constructions down at the water. It is some sort of watch towers which must have been used in the old days as some sort of watchtowers or signal towers from where information about approaching enemies could be relayed to the next watchtower. We stop to have a closer look at one of the towers – and as we stop we realize we are not completely alone on this southern road – suddenly a group of bikes drive by going from nowhere to out of nowhere.

We leave the bikers behind and continue our journey south and suddenly we arrive at something which does look a bit like civilization. We have reach the small town of Santa Cesarea Terme which has a few very pretty buildings particularly a very colourful building down at the water edge which you can see from the main road.

South of the small town we continue the drive on the lonesome road right next to the water enjoying the view and the sunshine. Finally we reach Castro which is one of the few semi big towns down here. We could have continue further south to the very tip of the heel of Italy but we are running out of daylight soon so we decide to go the faster road across the peninsula to the big town of Taranto up on the other side.