Sgombro means mackerel, and the thing to do with a freshly caught mackerel on the Amalfi Coast is to immediately eat it—after first cooking it in aqua pazza, or "crazy water," a sauce of white wine, tomatoes, garlic, and hot pepper. Praiano was still a half-hour away, and the shoreline was a wall of rock. Not far, though, was a sizable fissure. We paddled toward it and the opening turned out to be a true geographical rarity: a Mediterranean fjord. We entered the passageway and around a bend discovered a little beach. Behind it was a village. As discoveries go, it was up there with the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the title character first sets eyes on the lost city of Petra.

There was, thank God, a restaurant. We beached our kayaks, walked up to the door, and knocked. A handsome Italian man answered, looked down at my fish, and said, "Ah, sgombro." We then had the following exchange:

"Would you be willing to cook the fish?"

"Si. Maybe you would like wine, too?"

"Si."

In Praiano, the Faraglioni finally came into view. The Faraglioni are three giant rock formations protruding from the Mediterranean like some kind of oversized Henry Moore installation. Behind them lies Capri, grand and looming, to which the zigzagging coastline appeared to point. If the Amalfi Coast were an exclamation mark, then Capri would be the point.

Of the main Amalfitana towns, Praiano is the most subdued. Breakfast was a lingering affair. I sat in a garden and ate crusty bread with big pats of buffalo butter and jam. I placed folded slices of Soprassata on my tongue and drank strong coffee with hot milk. The air was fresh-smelling and suffused with birdsong.

That morning, the Mediterranean was a rippled blue dotted with whitecaps. My gaze kept returning to the Faraglioni. For most people, they are something to look at from a distance. Doing so requires boarding a ferry in Sorrento, disembarking at Capri's Marina Grande, and taking a taxi over the crest of the island to Marina Piccolo for an unobstructed gander. The adventurous board a tour boat, which takes them through an archway in the rock. The tension builds as the boat approaches the arch, and after it passes through there is always applause.

I had an idea. Why not paddle to the Faraglioni? Why not paddle through the arch?

The adventure called for a certain amount of courage, so I walked up the steps from my hotel, Casa Privata, and crossed the Amalfi Drive to visit the limoncello factory on the other side. There, I learned, they manufacture not only limoncello but also a liqueur made from fennel called liquora di finnochio. (I bought several bottles of each.) Farther up the coast, Federico and I dropped into the postcard that is Positano, climbed its famous stairs, stopped for a lemon granita, and witnessed firsthand the throngs busy refuting Steinbeck's prediction. The last town on the Amalfi Coast is Nerano. Most people give it a pass, and it's their loss because Nerano has a restaurant called Quattro Passi with a story-book patio. We stopped to carbo-load. It is my belief that travel is an occasion for overeating, and one of the benefits of kayaking is that it allows one to graze—in the bovine sense—without deleterious effects. The fact is, you need calories. Anticipating the eight-mile paddle from Nerano to Marina Piccolo, I consumed fresh fettuccine darkened with squid ink and tossed with seafood.