Hi! As I mentioned in my post last week, Emily and I planned a trip for this past weekend to hike the mountainous coast of Cinque Terre, which is a region on the Northwestern coast of Italy, made up of 5 distinct towns that are connected by hiking trails lining the Mediterranean. The name Cinque Terre means "5 Lands", and the 5 towns of the region are, in the order they are placed along the trail from south to north, Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso, that spans a distance of around 9 miles in length if you are using the easiest trail at the lowest elevation that snakes around the cliff overlooking the sea.
We got out of Rome bright and early Friday morning, and arrived at the first trailhead in Riomaggiore by 11:25am, eager to start our 9 mile hike; we planned to do the entire thing from Riomaggiore to Monterosso all-day Friday, since we reserved a hotel in Monterosso for both nights, and had to be there by 6pm Friday to check in.
This was taken as soon as we got off the train, notice how clothed and clean we look...that will change very quickly I promise.
We hiked along the first trail from Riomaggiore to Manarola easily, you can see from the picture it is a fenced in trail at a low elevation, so it was a nice relaxing way to start the journey.
This is still the trail from the 1st to 2nd town, you can see how low and flat it is.
So then we get to Manarola and we hit the first glitch in our plan- the normal trail between the 2nd and 3rd town, Corniglia, was closed because of landslides, and so they were advising everyone to take either the 5 minute train or ferry to reach the 3rd town. Emily and I were not ready to pause hiking since we had only been going for about 20 minutes, so we asked a shop-owner in the town if there was an alternate trail route, and little did we know what we were getting into when we nodded in enthusiastic agreement at his proposed solution to take the 7a expert trail... He told us it would take 3 1/2 hours since it was pretty rugged and remote in how it took us to the top of the mountain range then took us straight back down to Corniglia, which is really only a 30 minute hike if the easy trail had been open. I was confident about it, and Emily ran a marathon last year, so we were not worried about physically being able to do it, but wow, was it harder than we expected!
SO many rugged stairs... Emily is dutifully climbing the thousands of stairs about 45 minutes into the trail...
You can't see my face in this small picture but I am thrilled to reach the first peak of the mountain range... By this point were soaked to the bone with sweat and had dust caked all over our legs and arms
Emily so happy reaching the top! The view was INCREDIBLE. Sort of scary being able to stand at the very edge of the cliff without any barrier, but such an adrenaline rush!
This part of the trail was at least sort of fenced in! (that piece of land in the distance is where the final town is located)
Looking back at the second town, Manarola.
Looking onwards to the 3rd town, Corniglia. This was about halfway between the two towns.
Emily and I along the trail.
Emily's Teva "mud-line"
And we finally reached Corniglia 3 hours later!! I have tons more pictures I took along the trail but they all look sort of the same, just beautiful ocean and beautiful green mountains, so I didn't post them all on here..
We arrived in Corniglia, literally shaking from the hike and our water bottles running out halfway through the hike, so we took a 10 minute break to eat and chug water before we set out for the 90 minute hike from Corniglia to the 4th town, Vernazza.
This is a view of some of the brightly colored houses as we were leaving Corniglia.
That is Corniglia far in the background. This trail wasn't a piece of cake but definitely felt like it compared to the hellish expert-hiker trail we got ourselves into to get to Corniglia!
The view along the cliffs was just so breathtaking, the colors were so vibrant and we loved being able to see a new view of the coast every 100 yards of hiking along the trails, it was the best way to see the area.
Some of the trails weren't entirely safe to use...oh well
Again, on the trail leading down to Vernazza.
First sighting of the 4th town, Vernazza!! So cool how all the towns are situated up on cliffs.
Emily and I before we started the last leg of the trail leading straight down into Vernazza.
So we got to Vernazza and it was 4:30 by this time, and the guy we were renting our room from said we had to be there by 6pm (that guy is a whole different story, what a character...) and the trail from Vernazza to Monterosso is supposed to take 90 minutes at minimum; and so we didn't want to push it since we didn't know how far the room would be situated in town from the end of the trail, so we jumped on the 5 minute train that cuts through the mountain range and it was probably a good idea since we had been hiking for 5 hours straight...
This is Monterosso! It's the last town in the region, and is more of a beach town than any of the others and known for its night life and younger demographic so that's why we picked it.
Emily and I went to a delicious seafood restaurant recommended by trusty Rick Steve's (Emily's go-to for everything) and tried ravioli made with local fish and the local wine that is famous across Italy, they were both delicious!
We spent the rest of the night in Monterosso, exploring the town...it looks so pretty lit up at night!
Day 2!!! We went out to get breakfast then set out to hike the trail from Monterosso back to the 4th town Vernazza, and spend the day there.
Excited to start hiking again!
Gorgeous water along the low part of the trail before we headed up into the mountains.
Of course this trail was plagued with stairs as well.. At least we knew what we were in for this time!
This trail was really unique because it combined waterfront trails with ones that cut really far back into the mountains that included bridges running over streams.
Took lots of pictures along the way but sort of looks the same in picture-form as the ones from the first day...
This is the last part of the high trail before we descended down into Vernazza! (It's the little town in the background)
Vernazza view from the trail! See that little rock outcropping in the right of the picture? That's where we spent the whole day laying out and jumping into the water!
Some high-quality trail-side entertainment...
Reached the bottom of the town down by the water! So excited to jump in.
You couldn't just walk right in since it wasn't a beach, so you had to launch yourselves off the pier that was like 10 or 12 feet above the water, so much fun.
It was so easy just to float there because the water was so ridiculously salty that it just kept you afloat the whole time without you having to do anything.
Later in the afternoon! This is where we laid out by the water... Note the classy Espana pride towels we picked up in Barcelona...
After a long sun-soaked day we headed back to Monterosso and had another delicious dinner by the water before we decided to try another expert trail, recommended to us by our energetic/wild landlord, that went from the end of Monterosso all the way up to the very top of the entire mountain range of Cinque Terre, and it's the only spot in the region from which you can see all 5 towns at once, so we set out with a bottle of wine to catch the sunset.
This is the bottom of the trail by the beach before we started our trek up the mysterious trail 10..
So, we clearly didn't learn our lesson the first time about expert trails, and we ran into sort of an actual issue this time... Don't be worried Mom or Dad if you're reading this, I am fine now!! So here's the long story as short as I can make it.... Corrado (our landlord) told us it would take 40 minutes, so we left at 8:30 so we could be up there in time for the sunset, and the initial part of the trail seemed pretty normal; then we left the main road and started to ascend into a trail with steps made for giants, and soon enough we were well above the line of any houses or hotels in Monterosso. We had been hiking for about 15 minutes and we literally had not seen or heard a soul and it was sort of eerie and giving me a weird feeling and I brought it up to Emily, but she soon convinced me that I was being a worrywart and it was nice to have the trail to ourselves. So we continued upwards and every time it seemed like we couldn't go any higher, the trail would twist and reveal another mile high branch of the trail. We kept stopping and asking each other if it was sketchy or fine, and neither of us were sure, but we were so far up at this point that we just wanted to reach the top, so we continued on... Well finally, at around 9:10, we saw a branch towards point 1 of trail 10, which we assumed was the lookout, so we headed towards it when all of a sudden we heard really loud steps through the woods next to the trail. We both froze instantly, huge knots forming in our stomachs as we slowly turned to each other with panic in our eyes- there had been NO ONE on the trail this entire time, not even any animals we had seen, so you can imagine our unease. The heavy footsteps in the woods stopped almost immediately after we froze, and then as I took a step back towards Emily, the footsteps resumed then stopped again after I froze. By this time, we were entirely freaked out, and we had no idea if it was a human or an animal but we knew we wanted to get the hell out of there so we took off sprinting down the trail and the pits in our stomachs did not go away until we reached the town and saw much-welcomed civilization! Thank god the noise had turned us back sooner than we planned, because it was still light out when we hurriedly made our way down the trail, and I think that trail would have been super hard to maneuver quickly in the pitch black since there were no houses or lights around. So Emily and I picked a bench in the most crowded part of town to drink the bottle of local wine we toted all the way up and down the mountain, and vowed to be much less adventurous in the future. So see, we were fine!!
This is the one picture I took that night that came out clear, the rest were blurry...
Day 3: Continuing on our new plan of playing it safe and taking it easy, we took the ferry from Monterosso all the way back to Riomaggiore (the first town) in time for our train back to Rome in the early afternoon.
The ferry was a great choice, you could sit up on the top deck and catch beautiful views of the mountains that we couldn't see from our perspective up on the hiking trails.
The sea-side view of Vernazza, that grey pier is where we laid out on Saturday.
Beautiful sailboat sailing in front of the 3rd town, Corniglia.
Corniglia, nestled up in the hills amidst cliffs.
It literally sits on cliffs...
Emily and I on the ferry!
Riomaggiore, the first town along the trail!
Off the ferry, walking through the town of Riomaggiore.
The town had such a cool layout of houses built on houses.
So, all in all, it was by far the coolest, most amazing place I have ever been to, and it makes it so much better that we were able to explore it via hiking trails, since both of us are filled with that explorer spirit and so it was a perfect fit. Not to mention it was probably equivalent in intensity of any lacrosse workout I am supposed to do this summer, so it was a great way to make up the lack of a real gym in Rome! If any of you can choose to go anywhere in the world for a vacation in your future, GO TO CINQUE TERRE! It was one of the best weekends of my life, hands down. And entirely worth getting behind on all the schoolwork I have for my classes here in Rome, oops!
No comments:
Post a Comment