Saturday it was supposed to rain, a rather large disappointment when one is in the Cinque Terre as the major activities here are out-of-doors. Luckily the day dawned partly cloudy and we refused to believe the forecast pushed out to our cell phones.
The path begins climbing gently from Monterosso al Mare, but the climbing continues for 2 km.
The Sentiero Azzuro or “Trail No. 2” is still closed in some sections, plus it is the trail most tourists gravitate to, so we headed in another direction, north out of Monterosso al Mare to the town of Levanto. As we were staying in Manarola, we had to take a train to Monterosso, about an 11 minute ride. Any adventure that begins with a train ride scores extra points with Ric.
Train station with a view, and Ric.
The fact that we also started the day with freshly-baked, flaky pastries filled with chocolate, still warm from the oven… well, need I say more? Yes, I must say more, because we topped off with a torta di noci e marmelada di albicocchi (pie-like pastry with walnuts and apricot jam) before leaving Monterosso. SIGH, I love vacation.
Tower above Monterosso, along the path. A residence? A hotel? Non lo so….
We enjoyed almost complete solitude for the first 2 kilometers of the hike, only encountering three people. This was a tough trail with steep and unending stairs placed into the hill. Some scrambling was required where hard rock refused to yield to trail building.
Unending stairs.
By now the path is steeper. Ric says try not to show how much he is sweating.
Monterosso from above.
After an hour of constant uphill trekking we reached the ruins of the Eremo di Sant’Antonio, a 13th century monastic hermitage at Punto Mesco. Stupendissimo!
Eremo di Sant’Antonio. Imagine building this in the middle ages?
Ruins of Sant’Antonio (Not me! The rock walls!)
Three years ago, in October 2010, we first traveled to Italy and were in the Cinque Terre about this time. We were daunted by the 60-or-so stairs we had to climb to our room in Vernazza! We hiked a portion of the Sentiero Azzuro that trip but nothing nearly so ambitious as this 10 km hike-and-scramble. Now, with a level of fitness we never thought we could achieve, it was a challenge but one we knew we could accomplish.
On the way down, different surfaces through a piney and then deciduous wood.
This is not an environment of “groomed” trails and sometimes it was difficult to tell where the trail was.
At a junction we couldn’t decide if this was a stream bed or a path…. The path was in fact hidden to the right and then merged into he stream bed.
Where’s the path? This rock formation presented right in the middle of the path. Where to go? Upon scrutiny, there was a “path” to the right…sort of.
From Punto Mesco most of the 2.5 hours was in descent, but the extent of trail maintenance seemed to be clearing off fallen trees. Not that it was a bad trail, but in some places it required some creativity in finding the best path. We encountered a number of people hiking up from Levanto, intent on reaching Monterosso. Looking back at our route, we were happy we hiked Monterosso to Levanto, and equally happy we started quite early as we hit Levanto at just the right time for lunch, allowing us to call this hike yet another Path to Lunch. And how nice is it to start with pastry and end with wine?
How cute is this? On the outskirts of Levanto, a little cat-feeding station protected by an umbrella.
Boardwalk in Levanto
It was windy that day.
Girovaga 