You don’t always make the best decisions after a lunch with a few glasses of wine, but one October in Italy’s Cinque Terre, I made a pretty good one. I was staying in Lerici, on the Golfo di Poeti, near where Percy Shelley drowned, and I had taken a ferry from there to Monterosso, the farthest out of the five towns that make up the Cinque Terre. The towns themselves are everything you’d want them to be, especially in late fall when the tourist crowds have nearly evaporated and you can have an intimate little trattoria all to yourself.
So, after wandering through the town for awhile and enjoying some sort of truffle-speckled pasta and the aforementioned wine, I wandered back toward the ferry dock. On the way, I passed the sign indicating the hiking path from Monterosso to Vernazza. I like a pleasant little hike as much as the next person, and I figured it probably wasn’t that far, given that some people hike from the first town all the way to the fifth. This was just one leg of that journey, and I was wearing sneakers, so why not?
Well, the vino quickly wore off and the endorphins kicked in, as the initial part of the hike was nearly completely vertical. It is a bit more challenging than I expected, and several hikers gave up and turned back, but after the first hour, I felt pot-committed and was not about to give up. The path is so narrow that, in most places, for someone to pass in either direction, one person has to kiss the wall. That sort of proximity builds an easy camaraderie that is undeniably encouraging.
The international aspect of the experience also hammered home the universality of a physical challenge. I exchanged fatigued giggles and eyerolls and fumbled my way through “All downhill from here, right?” in a variety of European languages. The only rudeness I encountered during the entire journey was actually, embarrassingly enough, from a family of Americans. Two children and a husband were being driven along like a pack of wolves by a comically obnoxious mother barking out commands like “Low and wide!” to her panting crew and “On your left!” to anyone in her path. I didn’t see her strike any of them with her hiking stick, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had.
I’m pretty sure they missed the entire point of the experience. Climbing through olive groves on the face of a cliff over-looking unbelievably blue water is not something to be done at military speed. A few of us stopped to watch a group of boys jump off the side of the cliff, screaming and laughing as they dove into the cool water below. The wolf family probably knocked a few of them out of the way for taking too much time, but the rest of us savored the freedom and goofy “boys will be boys in any language” moment.
Last fall, the entire area, including Vernazza, was heavily hit with floods and mudslides, but recent pictures show the town as beautiful as ever. I would encourage anyone to go to Cinque Terre and spend a day trekking leisurely between the towns. Your Duchess does like to have a plan and execute it to the letter, but sometimes you need to wander off-course and take the slow road. As long as you still make the last ferry back to the town where you’re staying! As a bonus, after a few hours hiking through the hills, you may just have picked up enough of an earthy scent to get a little corner of the ferry all to yourself!