Blog #14 – Hiking the Cinque Terre Trails

Unfortunately, I don’t have any more wine recommendations from Giulio.  We are now at our hotel near the Rome airport and will be flying home tomorrow.  I will post this last blog from Italy and then we will catch up when we return to Canada on our stories and photos from Venice, Lucca, Florence, Rapolano Terme (hot springs), Montepulciano, Siena, and our last night in Rome, plus any other special stories that come to mind such as our experiences with driving in Italy and the origin of our favourite catch-phrase, “Give us this day our daily Gelato”.

One of the advantages of renting a car on a vacation and planning your own itinerary is that you can be flexible about what you do and when you do it.  Our original plan was to stop in to hike the Cinque Terre trails as we drove by them from Camogli (near Genova) to our apartment in Tuscany on October 2nd.  However, when we started out that morning the skies were looking gray and quite ominous.  So instead of a hike, we decided to visit the old medieval town of Lucca, which will be the subject of another blog. 

The Cinque Terre (pronounced “Chinkway Terrah”) is an isolated region along the Liguran Sea (the northern end of the Mediterranean Sea) coast about 50 km east of Genova.  It was totally isolated by coastal mountains up until about 100 years ago when they built tunnels and put in a railway.  Up until then, the only way in was by boat or walking on paths.  There are five small villages about 2 to 5 kilometres apart from each other that are connected by hiking trails that offer stunning views of the coast and a challenge to hikers due to the amount of elevation change up and down from village to village.

Monterossa, the starting point for the hike.

We decided to drive back to the Cinque Terre on October 5^th hoping for better weather, but a big rain storm blew through Northern Italy on the night of October 4th and when we woke up the next morning, it looked like another gray day.  After hemming and hawing we finally decided to go because we didn’t want to miss this chance to see this UNESCO World Heritage Site.  So we jumped in the car and drove for two and a half hours until reaching La Spezia were we went through the usual dance routine of trying to find parking where we wouldn’t get an expensive ticket or get our car towed away.  La Spezia is the eastern starting point to the Cinque Terre recommended in the Rick Steves’ Italy guide book, where he said that we should be able to park in the new underground parking garage beneath the train station.  Well, as we discovered, someone should tell Rick that the parking garage is not operational yet.

When we bought our Cinque Terre Treno Cards at the La Spezia train station, we learned that some of the hiking trails had been closed that day because the storm from the night before had washed out sections of the trail and they were not safe.  The Treno Cards let us hop on and off the train at any of the five villages, plus we also needed it to hike the trails.  We decided to take the train to the western-most village, Montereosso (the busiest and most commercial village) and start hiking back to the next village, Vernazza (considered the most picturesque) and then continue hiking to the next village if time permitted or just take the train back to La Spezia.

Monterossa was a very picturesque in its own right, so we took lots of photos, bought three bottles of water and started out on our hike, expecting to complete what Rick described in his guide book as a 90 minute leisurely stroll along a coastal mountain trail.  As we started the climb out of Monterossa, we came across a bedraggled, sweaty group of hikers coming the other direction from Vernazza, so we asked them how long they had been hiking.  One man glanced at his watch and said two hours.  We knew then that it might not be quite as leisurely a stroll as we thought.

Our next clue that the hike would be more vigorous than anticipated was after climbing up about 300 steps cut into the side of the hill and seeing no end in sight to the upward climb.  After a few wrong turns on side trails that the local farmers used to get to their vineyards and olive trees, we finally reached the top.  The views certainly were stunning and I’m afraid the pictures may not do justice to them due to the sky being overcast and the light being less than optimal for photos that day.

435, 436, 437, ....  Don't these steps ever end!

As is our habit when adventuring we met and chatted with other English-speaking people as we went.  I made the grave error of asking one couple if they were from Australia when I heard their accents, but soon discovered that they certainly were not as they were from New Zealand.  We also met people from Ireland, Canada, the UK, the US, Germany, Italy and France during our hike that day. 

Several cats had homes along the trail.

One very interesting young man who joined us for about two-thirds of our hike was Matt, an electrical engineer from California who was traveling throughout Italy for four weeks visiting friends and seeing as many sites as he could.  We each shared many of our stories about travelling throughout Italy with which made the hike much more enjoyable. 

Our new friend Matt from California

Matt took a few courses in Italian before coming over to Italy and told us a funny story about an encounter he had with a waiter.  Matt was enjoying a house wine he had ordered at a restaurant when he decided he wanted to know what kind of wine it was.  The waiter had been acting quite rude from the moment that Matt had sat down, but nevertheless, Matt bravely asked the waiter in his best Italian what the wine was.  The waiter grew even more indignant when he seemed to understand Matt was simply asking “What is this?”  The waiter practically shouted at Matt that he was drinking wine of course.

We finished the first trail from Monterossa to Vernazza in a little over two hours.  We paused along the way for photos and to just take in the views plus some of the sections were over slippery rocks from the rain, so we didn’t go as fast as the guide book had suggested.  After sharing a pizza and drinks with Matt in Vernazza it was past 5:00 pm and too late to start the hike to the next village, which had an estimated hiking time of 90 minutes and meant that we could be out on the trail after dark.  So we hopped back on the train and returned to La Spezia where we found our car safe and sound and drove back to our Tuscan apartment.

Vernazza, the end of the trail.  But first we had to get down there before we could enjoyu our reward of pizza and cold beer!

Three intrepid hikers, Matt, Sandy and Lorne.  Photo taken by our new friends from New Zealand, even though I called them Australians.