Cinque Terre, La Spezia

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33. Cinque Terre, La Spezia

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I woke early and headed to a nice Sicilian bakery on the other side of the train station (croissants were good but the panzerotti promised by Rick Steves was never available here). As if I weren't already dejected enough about the camera, it was raining again. Well, in the Cinque Terre there isn't much else to do indoors, so I started the spectacular hike northwest to Monterosso under my umbrella. This is a fun narrow trail which goes a long way up the fairly lush hill overlooking the coast, and then steeply back down again. This early in the morning and in this weather, I saw no one for the first 45 minutes. The first encounter was a nice, similarly insane gay couple from Sydney. Not long after, groups of mainly Germans began to appear on the trail, but it wasn't terribly crowded. I wished I could have taken pictures of this beautiful section of the trail.

At Monterosso, I waited for a train heading south. I decided to try La Spezia, all the way south past the Cinque Terre. I had little idea what I would find, but it seemed to be the nearest town of any size, and perhaps they had cameras. I was lucky. The helpful information office at the station marked half a dozen camera shops within walking distance on a map for me! In the first five, I found cameras I would have settled for, but not what I really wanted. My Canons had always taken good pictures, but the shops either didn't carry them or were sold out. The last shop I tried had by far the best selection, and I picked up a new Canon Ixus 40. Not only did it have twice the pixels, but it was slimmer and fit better in my pocket than my old one. At €399 for the camera and a 1 GB SD card, it wasn't even that much more expensive than what I would have paid in the US.

By this time, the weather was improving, and I was kicking myself for having moved so slowly and aimlessly this morning. I just missed a train back north, and had to wait almost another hour at La Spezia. Next stop was Riomaggiore, southernmost village of the Cinque Terre. Here I picked up the required hiking pass for the region. The "trail" from here to Manarola is like a wide sidewalk, an easy 15-minute stroll on flat ground. At Manarola was an obstacle — the trail from here along the insanely steep coastline to the next village, Corniglia, was closed because of the rain. So I decided to take the long detour inland (and a long way up) on trail 6d. This was hard to find; I took a wrong left turn and ended up back on the closed trail. In the end I headed basically straight up the ridgeline, a tough climb. There were many terraced vineyards where it was easy to lose the way, but I finally made it up to the top of the high ridge line and the town of Volastra. Fantastic place to live; the topography is not unlike Big Sur, but with vineyards in place of redwoods, and the sparkling blue Mediterranean seems to create an amazing quality of light. The sun was now out much of the time, and it was actually a very hot climb. The air was very clear, and I had a remarkable view of showers scattered about out to sea. One of these was headed inland. Just as I entered the protection of a forest canopy, the edge of the shower passed overhead for a short while. The place is surprisingly lush and green — the climate here must be a lot wetter than that of Southern California. It took me around two hours to get all the way back down to Corniglia.

Corniglia is definitely a stunning village, perched on the cliff 100m above the sea. There is a very long, switchbacked stairway down to the coast. Near the water, I entered a very long pedestrian tunnel. This is supposed to take 15 minutes, but I walked quite quickly as it was already close to 17:00. At the end is beautiful Guvano beach, which apparently made headlines in the 70s when the locals tried unsuccessfully to chase away the naked hippies. When I arrived, they were about to close down and lock up the tunnel. But there's an alternate way to go by trail up the hillside, so I was able to stay for a little while. I was hot from the fast hiking, and a quick swim on the deserted beach was refreshing. But I had no towel and the air wasn't warm, which perhaps is why I came down with a cold the next day. The "trail" up from here is incredibly steep, and I wouldn't want to try to go down it — uphill was barely manageable. The hour-long hike from the top onward to Vernazza was pleasant and beautiful, and I finished just in time for dusk. Now it was time for laundry again. A convenient place is open late not far from the train station, but its dryers, though expensive, are not very effective. Fortunately, my hosts kindly put out a drying rack for me, so my clothes were able to dry out overnight.

Jonathan's Travel Blog :: Europe

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