We're in the Cinque Terra! Out of the five villages, we're staying in the one called Manarola, which is the second-most southern of the collection. It's also (according to my travel guide) the best place to swim with the least amount of people, home to the best ice cream out of the five villages -- a claim Andreina will vouch for -- and yearly lights up it's hills with the world's biggest Nativity Scene illuminations. Since getting here yesterday afternoon, it's been almost nothing but unbelievable beauty.
We left Milan at about noon. Andreina had an assigned seat number but I was free to sit wherever there was room. The couch she was assigned to, weirdly enough, was also being occupied by a trio family from Utah taking a yearly vacation, having just gotten in Milan that morning and headed to the same area we were but to another village. At first, I sat across from her, but then an older American lady came in and politely pointed at the seat I was in so I sat out in the passage hall on a very simple seat. The lady left after a few stops and then I reclaimed my spot in the compartment.
The family from Utah kept up a very lively conversation for most of the three hours we were together. Our talk ranged from the Twilight series to the problematic solution of nuclear power for energy. They were extremely, extremely well-traveled due to the fact that the dad was a retiring pilot. When they got off at a few stops before us, I felt very talked-out. The only person left in the compartment astride from Andreina and me was this Chinese boy who had stayed quiet for almost the entire time before joining in to the conversation with very shaky English. He got off the train with us in La Spezia and we went our separate ways.
When we finally made it to our base village of Manarola, we started following the simple directions that the hostel had emailed to me, and immediately discovered just how inhumanely steep the roads are here. Our hostel is towards the top of the hill and every time we leave or come back, it makes us sweat! The first time up, in fact, I was pretty much breathless getting in through the door way. We checked in, the down our things, looked around for a little bit, and then took off to find some sea water for swimming. The nearest sand-beach was three villages over, but Manarola has rock beaches with huge boulders to lay out on in the sun -- or to do back-flip dives off of to a three or four story fall! We got to watch countless daredevils egging each other on in their cliff-diving competition. It's not something that I would ever do myself -- the water is obviously sufficiently deep, but no way!!
We came back after some time, changed from our wet things, then took off again to walk the town. It was only around 6pm or so in the evening; originally, I just wanted to see the area immediately surrounding our village.
Instead...disaster struck!
We ended up getting lost following what we thought was a trail through the vineyards in the terraced landscape above the village. We wound about, going further and further up the hillside, the village getting tinier and tinier. On the far other side of the valley, we could see another person making their way down another path and we reasoned that certainly the path we were on, should we follow it further, would eventually rise to the top of the hill and connect with the opposite path so that we could make a complete circled back into the village.
We walked and walked and walked, and then suddenly the path we were on ended with no explanation whatsoever! We walked across some barren landscape and ended up on another oath that, later on, also ended abruptly. From there, we climbed up to yet another path (I had to give Andreina a boost to get up from the level we had initially been on to this higher path, and she had to help pull me up) that also, surprise surprise, ended abruptly. We were near the top of the hill. The far side of the valley, in people's probably private vineyards, with no clear way whatsoever of getting back down, and had taken so many twists off what had been our initial obvious path that we couldn't even properly backtrack to return to the village.
On top of all that, it was getting later and later in the evening. It was passing 8pm. And I had been doing all this extraneous hill climbing through gravel, dirt, weed, and rock, wearing a skirt and flip flops.
Andreina started getting obviously spooked. It was still very light out, but you could see the shadows creeping into the corners of the valley. I took the lead and bull-headed my way through obviously private property, beneath a vineyard and scrambling up a wall then down another, and finally we joyfully fell across our first well-missed path back to town. Just in time to get to the outskirts of the village and make out the sunset over the sea behind the distant hills.
The entire thing is going to be a very, very funny memory! Best of all, neither of us could stop laughing once we realized we'd gotten lost, neither of us could stop laughing once we realized we'd have to backtrack, and even when Andreina started getting truly anxious we still kept up a streaming repertoire of jokes, possible news headlines, and likely sources of food for our stranded condition. It was, to the end, a blast.
Plus, the entire time, we shameless snacked on the tons of grapes from the vineyards as well as the tons of wild blackberry bushes. The blackberries were my favorite, the grapes Andreina's.
We made it back into town and found a comfortable spot to just sit and chat for the next few hours. We watched the night get darker, watched the waves that crashed into our beach boulders get inkier and inkier, and then wandered around the sleepy village in search of something to eat. Unfortunately, by then only the most expensive restaurants with exorbitant prices were still open. We remembered that our hostel had advertised an in-house menu with one of the catch phrases being how much more affordable it would be to eat in compared to the other prices in town. But when we got back to the hostel, it was after 10pm and the kitchen had closed at 8:30. Our dinner was leftovers from breakfast we'd squirreled away from Milan with the promise of a fresh, delicious breakfast in the morning.
We washed some clothes and then made one final tour of the city because I wanted to catch some of the starry skies and the reflection of the moon off the black waters. There was no sight of the moon, though, and we wandered back down to the shore for a little more chatting before finally heading back to the hostel for the night. My shower made me feel like a new person as I snuggled into me clean sheets to read a bit. Andreina declared she was going to write in her own journal, but I could hear her sleeping not ten minutes later, completely drained.
I couldn't sleep, though, whatever the reason, tossing and turning for what seemed like forever before I lost track of it all and passed out. I was plagued by a too-active mind, going through all the plans I have for myself in the future, repeating all the conversations I'd had with my sister, my thoughts wired like I'd taken too much coffee.
In the morning, I woke up to ringing church bells from the sanctuary next door with sweet birdsongs to follow. It was 8am and our hostel has a policy where it's doors are locked from 10 - 4pm. Andreina was still sound asleep so I read for a bit before waking her a little after 9 so that we'd have plenty of time before our lock-out.
Today's ambitious plan was to walk the trails that connect the five villages. I'd heard that a regular person could do the walk in about five hours, which would occupy us for the entire day. We grabbed a good omelette for breakfast then took the local train to the furthest village, Montorosso, and began our walk at about 11am.
At first, we stayed near the town, going up the hills just next to it, and then we started on the real trail to the next village over, Vernazza. It was, in short, a killer of a hike.
It was steep. The path was narrow and dangled over the cliffs like they delighted in freaking you out from the view. It was unpaved loose stones, some of which rumbled unpleasantly beneath your shoes as you walked, making you skittish of a roll.
The day stared out as heavily cloudy and a little chilly, which accounted for our somewhat muted moods especially compared with our hyperactive conversations from the night before. We grabbed chocolate croissants before heavily hitting the trails and the chocolate was a huge mood boost. But the trail was so unbelievable hard -- both of us wore our swimsuits beneath lights shirts and stripped down to them as we went along, sweating profusely because of just how incredible steep the path became. Several times we had to stop for short breaks, and the trail just kept climbing higher and higher.
What had seemed like a chilly day because an intensely hot day. When we finally made it to the town of Vernazzo, we'd only spent about 90 minutes on the trail but it had felt like days. I proposed we nix the idea of the rest of the hike and simple get into the sea for some much-needed swimming. Andreina, who I'm sure would have voicelessly pressed on if I'd made the move to, agreed instantly.
The two towns, Montorosso and Vernazzo, are much more commercialized and touristy than our base village. I had been very impressed by how quiet and beautiful and uncrowded Manarola was yesterday; today I got to feel the press of the tourist season I'd expected. Montorosso is the most accessible of the villages by train, and Vernazzo it's neighbor, which explains why they seemed so much more run-down than Manarola. We were very lucky with our hostel location.
After deciding to just go to the beach instead of hiking a few more hours, we wandered down to see Vernazzo's shore and we're both repelled by it's crowds, deciding to rather catch the train back to Manarola. A tour group followed us there and for a moment we were upset at the idea that even Manarola's beaches would be crowded, but luckily they weren't. The turquoise blue waters had only a small amount of swimmers and cliff-divers; we found a spot among e boulders and spent the next few hours alternating between swimming in the refreshingly chilled waters and sun-bathing on the sun-warmed boulders.
I got us moving again after that, wanting to get Andreina's unprotected skin out of the sun before she went through the type of burn I had gone through in the Netherlands. We took the very gentle walk over to the next town over, going along a road known as the Love Trail that was cut into the side of the cliffs overlooking the sea. We stopped for a snack of brochette with delicately seasoned tomatoes and mozzarella then passed through the graffitied walked of the Love Trail, where people of all languages tag their names, initials, messages, poems, cartoonish figures, artwork, and more through the cliff-cut walls. It's a place made for the declaration of love, from your one-and-only to your country to yourself. We made it to the village of Riomaggiore, wandered slowly up it's hilly streets, and after a while wandered back the way we'd come to finally take a break in our hostel.
It's where we are now. Right now it's near 7pm and, as I mentioned at the start, we're going to eat dinner at a place with free wifi. Andreina, understandably, was bone-tired even if she wouldn't admit it to anyone who asked. When she easier what we'd be doing now, I mentioned I'd like to write a bit in this blog before we left to eat and she agreed, delighted with the prospect of a nap.
Tomorrow will be a good lazy day. I want to walk up the hills again first thing, but slowly this time, and do some foraging for grapes and berries. It's going to be our dedicated beach day as well after I make sure we both have on sunscreen. I still remember how painful it was carrying a backpack on burnt shoulders. If either of us have any energy, we might pick up the trail again, but I'm very sure tomorrow morning we'll be waking with aching, aching leg muscles that would much rather float weightless in the water or bake happily in the sun over any more hiking attempts. After tomorrow, it'll be off for France! Andreina's eyes light up every time she hears the language being spoken in the passing so I know she's bottling up some explosive excitement over the country.
I've taken so many pictures of the Cinque Terra. The land is beautiful! It comes so close to what Hulme describes as a place possible of totally meeting every human need without human labor. I could imagine living a foraging lifestyle in a place that provides for your every bodily want, berries growing abundantly and the seasons nothing but temperance. I'm afraid that I've fallen into terribly philosophical thoughts for the better part of the day and talked Andreina's ears off about human nature but then she talked mine off and we, I think, are even.
Location:Manarola, Cinque Terra, Italy
I love it! The one picture that kept going through my mind was, you both being lost in someone's backyard, eating up all the grapes until your body rejects them via diarrhea. Lol, that is when disaster will really sink in.
ReplyDeleteI heard that Andreina was able to speak French to someone, so that is really cool. I liked this post a lot. :)