When Sartre observed that "hell is other people," he might well have been speaking of Italy's Amalfi Coast in high season. Not so for Mark Schatzker. Following in the wake of the fishermen who first settled these gorgeous shores, he takes to the sea—kayaking from the town of Vietri sul Mare to the isle of Capri—and finds heaven at the end of a paddle

In 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte's older and, let's face it, less successful brother, Giuseppe, visited a mountainous stretch of south-facing Italian shoreline and liked it so much that he decided to put in a road. It took fifty years to construct, but when the route was finished, it was finally possible to reach the Amalfi Coast without the aid of a boat. Even then, the tourists did not come. In the 1950s, when John Steinbeck visited Positano, he found it almost free of human traffic and didn't think there was "the slightest chance" that the area would develop. "The cliffs are all taken," is how he put it in a story that appeared in Harper's Bazaar.

The road is called the Amalfi Drive and is said to be one of the world's finest—a festival of hairpin turns, Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph views of the Mediterranean, and, at one juncture, a limoncello factory. There is little doubt that it is truly one of the great drives—or was. Today, it is choked with something neither Giuseppe Bonaparte nor John Steinbeck ever envisioned: tour buses. At the road's wider points, where the physics are barely favorable to passing, the buses approach one another cautiously from opposite directions, one broadcasting its scripted tour in French, the other in German. A snaking line of drivers sit behind them—halted, enraged, and constantly overtaken by scooters that, as Steinbeck put it, "buzz at you like mosquitoes."

These days, the Amalfi Drive is officially known by a far less exciting name: SS163. Between the towns of Vietri sul Mare and Ravello, it makes somewhere between fifty and a hundred turns, at the sharpest of which traffic comes to a dead stop. Or so I am told. I wouldn't know, because I paddled the distance by kayak. At the beach in Vietri, my guide—a quiet, friendly Roman named Federico Ferendeles—pushed my sleek little craft out into the surf, where it nosed over the waves, bobbing beneath the hulking Lattari Mountains. Federico paddled up next to me and we set out west, following the shoreline, which has even more bends in it than the road.

Behind us, the beach was a raging din of activity. Teenage boys and girls were playing a game that involved a ball, a lot of giggling, and awkward gang tackles. Couples reclined on beach towels, limbs entwined, in the steadfast absorption of sunlight. Higher up, there were hotels where yet more sunbathing visitors lay recumbent in chairs. As usual, the SS163 was a snarl.

And then—poof—it all vanished. We rounded a corner and found ourselves in the company of only the sea and the crenellated coast. The waves slurped against the underside of the kayaks, then met their destiny against the rocky shoreline. It may as well have been 1807.

Which was entirely the point. My purpose in paddling the Amalfi Coast by sea kayak was to explore its maritime roots, because this place has always been about the sea. A thousand years ago, it possessed one of the most formidable naval fleets in Italy. In Steinbeck's day, it was a string of villages populated by fishermen and lemon growers. During the late afternoon, when the bars are jammed with people downing apertivi, you can still see the fishermen in their gozzi, or brightly colored wooden boats, paddling back to shore after a day on the water. It's a heart-stirring view, but the tourists tend to get in the way.