The ferry from Naples arrives into port at 5pm, we've arranged to meet our good friends Rhidian & Helen who are currently on holiday here. There's no wifi and the telecoms are not good, we've fired off emails and texts but the tablet is dying and so are the phones. We dont hear from our friends. Previous emails roughly said we'd be here in the afternoon but werent sure of our arrival times. Rhidian & Helen said they'd be at the port to meet us. There's three ports on the island, so what with the dodgy communications, we're in the lap of the gods.

Rhidian & Helen arent there...we've got no texts and so we take another Taxi fuelled by only the finest Champagne to Casa Mazzella in Terme which is by the port of Casa Micciola. We came into Porto Ischia by the way, but it's only a ten minute drive to the hotel. We fill out the mortgage agreements to pay the taxi driver and drop the gear off at the hotel. It's a lovely family run Casa and they bend over backwards to help us, they've got 30 rooms ad we open ours onto a wonderful paved garden with lime trees and raised herb beds.

We figure that our friends are probably staying at a bit more of an upmarket place than ours as this is their holiday. We charge the batteries and send more texts. Still no reply. In all honesty we're feeling a bit miffed at what's happened., but accept that it's due to bad telecoms on the island. Still no word and so we decide to walk down to the port......there's lots of posh cafes and restaurants, but we're dressed for Torremelinos..shorts and t shirts, so decide we wont bother. We head into a supermarket to see whats on offer...we get some stuff and head to the beach.

Ten minutes later the phone goes and it's our mate Rhidian on a very crackly line....we work out that it's bad communication and say dont worry......Rhid then says they'd like to meet up but they're in the middle of a five course dinner. I look at Grant, we're eating Pringles on the beach.

We say dont worry about meeting up tonight, we'll meet tomorrow as we're going to stay another night. We're staying longer as need to plan the next stage and we dont want any more of this last minute running to ferries business.