Visiting the Cinque Terre

October 27, 2007 Saturday

It had been raining off and on for most of the past 3-4 days. Saturday was supposed to be partly cloudy and Sunday was supposed to be sunny and warm. As usual, the meteorologists were wrong. Saturday was beautiful—sunny, warm, and only slightly breezy. Today a classmate and I were to go to the Cinque Terre.

The Cinque Terre (Five Lands), are five fishing villages poised on rocky slopes over the Mediterranean (www.my-cinque-terre.com). For centuries, they were interconnected by hiking paths and boats (they have been growing wine grapes, olives, lemons, and other produce since time immemorial). And the only way into or out of them was by boat until 1870 when the first rail line connected Vernazza with Rome and Torino (thereafter the other villages were slowly connected to the rail line). Much later, the towns were slowly connected to the modern road system, although the road that connects the towns meanders through the hills, following contours, rather than boring through tunnels as the trains do.

In the past decade or so, the Cinque Terre have been designated an Italian National Park and a UNESCO Heritage site. This provides some protection from development and discourages the more egregious activities that frequent tourist areas (like lots of advertising, etc.).

The names of the 5 villages are (from south to north): Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, Monterosso al Mare. Vidir, my classmate, and I took the train from Genova to Riomaggiore and walked to Vernazze. The entire hiking path interconnecting the 5 villages is 12 miles long. The path from Riomaggiore to Manarola is called the Via dell’Amore, or Path of Love (built in 1920s). This is an easy walk of about 30 minutes, well-paved and level. It makes an easy warm-up for later. Riomaggiore is where the National Park station is located for the Cinque Terre and has two rows of houses and lots of seafood restaurants. The Via dell’Amore is right on the coast and has wonderful views of the villages at both ends and the Mediterranean (see the picture album). Manarola is a bit larger than Riomaggiore, but not by much. We continued the walk.

Once you’re north of Manarola and off the Via dell’Amore, the path gets a bit more rugged. The paving stops in favor of beaten dirt with rocks reinforcing the edges. It also begins to rise, with rock-edged steps of uneven height and depth making the effort more of hike or trek than a walk. You definitely don’t want to do this in dress shoes—you need at least tennis shoes here (preferably waterproof if it’s rained recently, which it had). This section of the path also begins the area where you see some of the famous terraces. These terraces are supported by stone walls, muretti, of about 4-5 feet in height. These muretti have been built over the past 1000 years. The stones were carried by hand up the slopes to buttress the terraces to keep the soil from washing away. Some of the grape vines and olive trees on these terraces could only be harvested by lowering men on ropes (these days, modern technology has solved the problem—they use miniature railroad engines and cars to get to these remote terraces). It’s commonly said that if you put all the muretti end-to-end, their length would exceed that of the Great Wall of China.

Anyway, it’s an impressive sight to see all these terraces following the contours and covered with vines and trees (see photo album). And the sights from the high trail are magnificent.

This leg of the hike, from Manarola to Corniglia, is a bit strenuous and took about an hour. If you can make it up 4 flights of stairs a couple times a day, this leg is not hard (not easy, either). Especially the end. Just when you think you’ve climbed all the stairs to Corniglia, you are faced with a switchback of stairs. 382 of them to be exact, at least that’s what the sign says when you get to the top. But what a view!

This is where most people should stop hiking and take the train to the next village. The hike onto Vernazza is strenuous and takes a couple hours, unless you’re in reasonable shape (I’m not and I was huffing and puffing and just putting one foot in front of the other a good part of the way). The trail goes way up and way down and the trail is very rugged (although the changes in height are not sudden, there are a lot of rustic “stairs”, and a lot of unevenness in the trail, even on the relatively level sections. In places the trail is very narrow with no railing between you and a drop of a few hundred feet down a rocky slope. The stairs, if such you call them, are very rough with lots of rocks placed unevenly to keep the trail from eroding. You really should be wearing hiking boots for this section, not tennis shoes.

At one point during the hike on this section, there was a sign “Free Beach” and pointing to a path that was a vertical 500 feet down to the beach. I can only think (hope!) that the sign was a joke (but there was a path that was not overgrown, so someone—or something—must use it)! Another one on the other side of the point added a scrawled: "Nude Swede" to the sign (of course, there was no indication of the gender or age of the Swede). At this point, after huffing and puffing for quite a while, some nutso all dressed up in lycra went running past at full tilt and down some treacherous steps (I found myself wishing he mis-stepped and pitched headlong over the cliff!).

But the worst part of this section is not the effort it takes to climb it. It’s that most of the time there are trees and other vegetation blocking your view on one side and the hill on the other, so there’s little to see most of the time. Not that you have much chance to look anyway, since you have to watch how you place your feet to keep from turning an ankle or stepping into mud. But when the view is there, it is fantastic! Now whether those 2 places where there is a view are worth the 2 hours of strenuous hiking? I think not. But there are those who think otherwise.

Once at Vernazza, the 4^th village, I refused to continue on to the 5th village, which is supposed to be the hardest hike of all. Besides, it was already late in the day by the time we got to Vernazza—we wouldn't have made Monterosso al Mare before sundown. So we got some dinner at a local pizzeria and took the train back to Genova. I was exhausted, but got lots of great photos. It was a good day!