04-22 We Hike UP, We Hike DOWN

The Cinque Terra is a group of 5 towns each build on the hillsides of a valley that goes to the sea. Getting from Monterosso to the next town over, Vernazza, requires traversing 3 or 4 hills and valleys to get there. We knew this going in and yet we still decided that hiking was a good idea. After our "breakfast" in the cafe downstairs we headed out.

We walked over to old town Monterosso and found the trail marked to Vernazza. It said 2 hours. The trail consisted of many stairs up and many stairs down. Parts of the trail were gradual ups and downs like any hike you would find in a park. We found bridges fording over streams. It was just the sheer number of stairs that amazed us. Someone did a lot of work putting all of this together.

We took MANY pictures so the hike took us 2 1/2 hours. The views toward Vernazza and back at Monterosso were postcard-ish.

There were times when we though surely THIS is the final mountain we had to climb since the town looked so close. Of course, we eventually were rewarded with that last walk down toward our destination and the classic "Vernazza in the distance" photo of us.

This town was virtually put out of business by the flood that occured in late Oct 2011. Every business seemed to have been impacted. Since they rely on tourism for most of their income it was imperitive that they get up and running by Easter 2012.

And here is how it looks now. This is where all the mud and debris from the hillside ended up. They are trying to dig it all up and haul it away so they can have a nice functioning beach once again.

To their credit they managed to get most of the infrastructure done and some businesses were open. They dedicated a website to getting the information out about which hotels and restaurants were open. This is the main street in town. All of the water from the hillside runs in an aqueduct under this road. The aqueduct filled up and the water started running on the street. It reached 5 feet high coming down this street. Many of these businesses are still not up and running although they have widened the aqueduct underneath the roadway and repaired the roadway. There were cars floating down this street toward the sea.

We walked around town taking pictures of how the "new" town looked now. We shopped a little bit in the stores that were opening - not too many of them. There were some restaurants open. Karen had spaghetti and I had spinach raviola in pesto sauce (it was delicious).

The seas were very rough (and have been all week) so the ferry boat didn't run so we had to hike back to Monterosso. It only took us 90 minutes this time since we had taken all the pictures that would have ever needed to be taken on the walk over. The OTHER thing that helped our speed back was this sign. It wasn't in Monterosso so I'm sure our shoe selection had something to do with our slowness getting to Vernazza. Once we took off our heels we were flyin'.

Here is a great place for photos and videos of the disaster and recovery. http://www.ricksteves.com/news/cinque-terre/photos-videos.htm