5 Terre

My final Italian stop saw me heading north again, this time towards the famous national park of Cinque Terre, five tiny villages set into the valleys and peninsulas of the Italy’s northern west coast.

This was only a two night trip, and as there were no CouchSurfing hosts in the area, I had to stay at a hostel. I had picked one called Mar-Mar in the Cinque Terre’s first town, Riomaggiore. I arrived at around 6 o’clock to find that the office was closed but there was a note on the door with the key to the dorm and some exciting instructions as to how to find it. Soon I had found the place and it was nice. It was more like living in an apartment with a large number of beds in each room.

Also here was Jen from Vancouver, David from Tasmania, and Dan and Brad from Colorado. That night we all sat around and ate and talked until late. There really isn’t much to do in Riomaggiore after dark, especially in the low season. This was okay, ‘though, as I knew it was going to be a long day of walking the following day – I wanted to see all the towns in Cinque Terre, hopefully by walking the cliff top paths between them.

In the morning I woke up bright and early to a beautiful sunny day – I had my sights set on heading to the top of the mountain in Riomaggiore to find the sanctury of Monte Nero. After packing my bag with food, clothes and water for the day, I set off up what can’t really be called the “main road” as it’s the only road which cars can go down. At the top of the road I found the visitors centre and went inside to have a chat with the lady. She told me that the only path closed today (previously the entire track had been closed due to bad weather) was that between the second and third villages of Manarola and Coniglia, I would have to take the train.

It was then time to find the hilltop church and I set off along a road that seemed like it might go there. I could see it up the mountainside to my left, and when I found a little overgown staircase a few minutes along the road I decided to take it.

Stairs

This was not exactly an easy climb. The stairs were made of rocks which had been shoved into the hillside in every which direction. The blackberry was overgrown and prone to attack. The mud was slippery, my arm was bruised. Depsite all this, I soon made it to the top of the path, hitting a main road which lead towards Riomaggiore. The church was further up so I began to walk up this road. Unfortunately I never made it. After walking around for what seemed forever, I could not for the life of me find any other way to get up without walking along the main road for what would be far too long. So I headed back down, but not before admiring the view.

Riomaggiore

Cinque Terre coast

It was time to head to town number two, Manarola. The sun was still shining and the path between Riomaggiore and Manarola was open and easy. It was the kind of path which mothers could walk along with prams. It was great to be back by the sea, hearing the waves crash against the cliffs, smelling the salt blowing around.

On the track to Manarola

In around half an hour I arrived in Manarola. I’d been told that this was the most picturesque of all the villages so decided to give it a good dose of exploration. It turned out to be very small but like Riomaggiore, it was filled with little alleys and passages leading to cool views.

Little Manarola view

I kept walking further up the main road and on my left I came to a staircase. Curious, I walked up it and found a path which led along the terraces of olive trees and grape vines growing on the hill. I walked for a bit, and came to a funny looking railing which I realised was used as the track for a small motorised train to haul the produce up and down the hills. Climbing over this put me deeper into the orchardlands, but soon I was in a bit which seemed a bit dangerous so I turned back and headed up the hill further. This gave an amazing view over Manarola.

Big Manarola view

After this it was time to head onto the next town, Corniglia. The path between Manarola and Corniglia was closed to to bad weather the previous week, so I had to take the train. Soon I was there and about five minutes later my camera ran out of batteries. Stupidly, I had not brought along my second battery. I do have pictures from the rest of the adventure, but they were all taken on the Russian Vilia so I will have to develop them when I get home and I don’t know if they will even come out. I hope so!

Anyway, Corniglia starts with a huge zigzagging staircase and up I went being followed by two dogs. Halfway up the analogue camera ran out of film. Luckily I had another roll! Once I got to the top it was pretty apparent that this town was very small and there was not so much to do there, so I quickly looked around, skipped up and down a few alley ways and began the journey to the next town.

This is where the adventure really started. The track here was not pathed like the track between Riomaggiore and Manarola, this was proper bush walking and it was great (aside from the light rain). The path twisted it’s way around the rugged coastline, alternating between grape and olive groves, and Italian forest. About half an hour along the path, I came to a halt. There was a rock which had written on it “free beach,” and an arrow pointing down the cliffs towards the sea. This was interesting. I had to see this free beach. As I stood there deciding what I should do next, a head popped out from the track leading down to said beach. A familiar head of a girl that I had seen walking around earlier.

Upon enquiring about the beach, she said that she hadn’t all the way because it was a little dangerous, she was on her own, and there was an ominous looking tunnel that she’d just have to go in to if she made it down. Next thing we were both on our way down, scaling the perilous cliff, holding on to old rope to stop ourselves from falling to certain maimment (is this a word?).

Her name was Carmen and she was from Torquay in Victoria, Australia. This was good, we both understood the need to get to the beach so there was no turning back now. Decending the cliff, engulfed in bush we came to a presipice which looked a little ugly. Not to worry, ‘though, there wasn’t time for wimping out. So, with out weight towards the land, we scurried across the gravel which fell under our feet. Soon, out of the bush we emerged into an olive grove. Also included in this area were two abanodned houses and one which looked lived in, though I have no idea how anyone could get the things there to live. There was also a man wandering around, apparently according to Carmen. I never saw him. Soon we had made it to the bottom and it looked tricky to get to the actual beach so we decided to check out what seemed like an old train tunnel. It still could have been, but when we go inside it just stopped. Maybe it was a train house, who knows. At the back there was light streaming in, so we headed towards that and luckily for us, it lead us to a path down to the beach – one which haden’t collapsed in some kind of land slide.

Down at the beach the swell was pretty fierce but we were both glad to have made it. The heavy swell pulled the rocks along each other, creating an all too familiar rumbling sound, and the sand looked like the black sand of home. Soon enough we had our shoes off and were running around in what little sand there was. It was good to finally be on a beach!

After a short time there, we decided to head back up the cliff, a journey which seemed to take about half the time of getting down, even though we went a longer way. At the top, we advised a man who looked about 70 that is was probably not a good idea to go down there. And then along we walked, further along the path through the olive and grape groves. Then there was the sound of mewing, and out pops a cat from the forest. Meow meow, one breadstick, and a lot of us following him brought us too a crazy picnic table with a bucket full of cans of cat food, and about 4 other cats all going crazy. There was a sign on the bucket which asked people to use the food to feed the cats, so that’s what we did. Yum, yum, yum, jelly meat and an old haggard spoon. But the cats were happy.

Onward we continued and soon enough we had made it to the fourth town named Vernazza. This was definitely my favourite town and I’m pretty annoyed that my carmera had run out of batteries because the afternoon sunlight was amazing. Here we did not spend so much time because we knew it would get dark soon, but we did have a rest down at the waters edge by a man made sea wall, filled with local fishermen. I stood upon the wall, feeling the waves crash against it as Carmen sat down below. As beautiful as the town was, we soon decided that we better get going soon as it would get dark pretty fast and shortly we were back on the track, this time through proper forest with no orchards or groves of any kind. This track went up and up and up and we were both knackered pretty soon from the constant staircase walking, especially at the pace we were making to try and beat the sunset.

The next thing we knew we were decending the hill again, back down towards the final town, Monterosso. But on the way down we were distracted by a man sitting in a little hut. “Ciao!” we greeted him and saw that we was selling drinks, including his home made mulled wine which we bought and both thoroughly enjoyed. He told us that we were the only people who had walked past that day, and we sat and had a crazy conversation with him about allsorts of topics, mostly travel and his exwife and son in Vienna. He said that he had lived his whole life in the Cinque Terre and spoke English, German, Spanish and Italian without one lesson of any of them. Now that’s enouragement for the rest of us! While we were sitting and talking, darkness fell and he was offering us a ride up the hill on his little motorised train/motorbike thing which ran on a rail to the top of the hill. So in we got and off he went, only getting stuck for power in one place. It was steep and crazy, but heaps fun, holding on for dear life so neither of us would fall out of the trailer.

Once at the top, he was off down the hill on his Vespa, and we were walking down towards Monterosso on the road. When we made it to the village, we passed a wine shop which was still open and were called inside by the same man who had given us the drink and the lift for free pesto and wine tasting. The red pestro was absolutely amazing (sorry Mum, I couldn’t bring any home).

We caught the train back to Riomaggiore, and just when we thought the day’s craziness was over, we met a 67 year old lady who had just retired and “exploded” was artistic produce, mostly performance art. She the showed us many photos of her in action, including many of her in very litle clothes which were a little disturbing, especially seeing I could not understand a word she was saying. Carmen managed to have a full conversation with her in Italian which I though was very impressive – she said it was the first time this had ever happened too!

Soon we were back to Riomaggiore and the adventure was over. Neither of us could stop thinking about how crazy it was, but we needed to relax, so we headed to Carmen’s apartment which she was staying in and cooked some pasta, drank some wine and watched a terrible B-grade vampire film dubbed into Italian. It was terrible. And that was that. Crazy, crazy, crazy, awesome! I hope all of you reading this get to go to Cinque Terre, it’s an absolutely amazing place!

Forests, Fun; Finland!

The ferry pulled up to the Helsinki Tallink terminal at 10am on Sunday in the pouring rain. For about 10 minutes I wandered around outside in the rain, looking for my next host, Sampsa, and soon found him before I was soaked. Twenty-five minutes later we arrived at his apartment where I had my own room, a first in a long time.

It was a wet Sunday afternoon, but we decided that we should probably do something as Sampsa had to work 6am-5pm everyday and would not really have that much time for me so we headed out to the local forest. Sampsa had a plan for us to do a ten kilometer round hike through the forest so we left the road and headed into the wilderness. This place was beautiful, even in the autumn with the baring trees.

Lead the way, Sampsa

We walked through the mud and passed the first of many lakes which we would see. What caught my attention, though, were these crazy-huge lumps at the base of many of the trees. Sampsa enlightened me, they were anthills, huge ones at that. He explained that they were always built on the south side of a tree so when you were hiking, all you had to do was look for one of these and you would always know where south is.

Anthill

We ventured further and further into the forest but soon it started to rain. We figure, though, that we would keep going because it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately but the time we got about a third of the way through, the rain was getting thick and heavy, so we turned back. I fell down a bank and soiled myself, but it only took about half the time to return to the car.

That night, Annika, Sapmsa’s girlfriend, made a delicious fish soup. Later, I found a message on my Couchsurfing account from a girl who I had requested a host with in Helsinki but who could not take me in. Instead, she suggested that we meet up and that she show me around the town.

And so the following day I met up with Meri at the Kaampi shopping centre in the Helsinki CBD. We decided that we would go and check out a local art gallery but unfortunately she had forgotten that all museums and gallerys were closed on Mondays. Lost for ideas, we walked around a bit and decided to check out the Tumio Church.

Toumio Church

Afterwards, Meri wanted to show me some of the more intersting shops in the design district of Helsinki, and we took a tour of some interesting clothing shops, I bought an illustrated story book in an independent book store and we fouraged through a second-hand market. We also had lunch at a Thai restaurant, which was very nice, and checked out what appeared to be the only open art gallery (of which I can’t remember the name), which was showing an Icelandic photography exhibition of images contrasting nature with people who have intellectual handicaps.

I had told Meri that at some stage during my stay I wanted to vist the Helsinki island fort of Soumenlinna, and she suggested that we go that afternoon as it was supposed to rain over the next few days. So we hopped onto the ferry and headed over the sea to Soumenlinna, the fort which has protected Helsinki through numerous battles.

On the way to Soumenlinna

When we got there, the wind was blowing but we still explored our way around the fading buildings in which a few thousand people still live.

Soumenlinna Clock Tower

Soon the sun started to set and we decided to head to the seaside to see the sunset, which was rather subdued as the storm clouds were closing in fast. The wind was strong and blowing a freezing gale but we spent a short time there and ran back just in time to get the ferry back to the mainland.

Fort Walls

Meri and I and the Sea

Back at the mainland, we went out separate ways but not after arranging to meet again the following day so we could actaully visit some art galleries.

At 2:30pm the next day I met Meri at the Atenium gallery. They were showing an exhibition which displayed the works of five friends of Finnish author Mika Waltari, author of a famous Finnish book called The Egyptian. The paintings had nothing to do with the book and some were more interesting than others, but there was an actual mummy in a glass case which was pretty cool! There were also galleries of posters for the book and film, another of Japanese post-WWII photography and lastly one showing Japanese landscapes and scenescapes from over 200 years ago (watercolour).

After this we left and went to find lunch. We walked through What is known as Plague Park, a historic burial place of plague victims which has been converted into a park but continues to be littered with graves.

Plague Park

We went to the supermarket to look for a cheap lunch, and ended up with the Finnish specialty of Carelian pies, mashed vegetables in a crusty open pie. Actually very similar to the meat version eaten by the Lebonese (which I can’t remember the name of, sorry Sarah’s grandmother!). After this, we headed to the Helsinki modern art gallery, Kiasma, only to find that it had closed at 5pm (yes, a pretty late lunch) was closed. Meri had suggested earlier that I come over for dinner, so after a little bit of shopping we headed back to her place on the train.

That night Meri cooked a very nice salmon (yeah, I know), and we drank a New Zealand wine which she was adement to try. We talked about al sorts of things, listened to music, and at some stage, Meri the art student decided to sketch me. I don’t think it was too bad for a 5 minute job either!

Meri's Sketch of Me

The following day the weather was nice again, and Annika suggested that we go to Porvoo. Unfortunately it was too late because Meri still wanted me to see Kiasma and I had to be in town at 5:30pm. Instead Annika and I went for a wander around the forest and lake which was so close to her apartment.

Forest and Lake

We walked for about an hour through the forest which proved to be  some sort of squirrel breeding ground, they were everywhere! I’m going to miss these little guys when I get back to New Zealand.

Tree Squirrel

I made it into town with about five minutes to spare, but had forgotten where the gallery was, and after asking about three or four different people, I finally found it, only ten minutes late. Ridiculous seeing as I had been there only the day before. And now came the third time that I was to miss out on Kiasma. Meri had jsut recieved some bad news about a family member and didn’t really feel like visiting the gallery as the building is a very intense place to be in. We decided instead to do something spontaneous and walked down to the metro where she asked me “east or west?”. I figured at home, west is best, so we went west and ended up at a disused cable factory, Kaapeli, which now housed twelve galleries and a number of small theaters and other places.

Kaapeli

At Kaapeli we found only one gallery open. This was showing the works of what made itself out to be a prestigious art group called the Finnish Artist Group. Unfortunately for anyone who wants to be proud of artistic expression in Finland, this art was terrible. Both Meri and I spent the time in the gallery laughing at how unoriginal and prententious it was. Soon it was time to leave as Meri had TaeKwanDoe that night, so we took on last photo and headed back to the centre on the subway.

Meri, Me and Streetart

The following day it was time to leave Helsinki. My ferrry was at 10:30am and was headed across the gulf, the course set for Tallinn, Estonia. Goodbye Scandinavia!

Back to Sweden: Borlänge

After an excessive trip from Tromsø which saw me flying from Tromso to Bodø, then taking the night train to Trondheim, and one hour later taking another seven hour train to Oslo, sleeping the night there, getting up at 5:30am and flying to Stockholm, then taking a two and a half hour train, I arrived in Borlänge.

Borlänge is a small town of not very many people, but it is the home of my childhood au pair, Marie. I figured, and mum said I had, to visit Marie while I was in Sweden. It had been fourteen years since I had last seen her, and meeting her on the platform was interesting, she didn’t look anything like how she had all those years ago. It actaully turns out that how I remember her is the time that she had a perm! Anyway, irrellevant as that is, we, her and I and her two daughters (seven and nine) set off from the train station soon after I arrived.

Marie had decided to take me to a little river side cafe which, when we turned up, was full of Swedish bikers! They soon left and we sat down, had a coffee and talked for a while.

Riverside Cafe

She then suggested that we take a walk. And off we went. Along the road and towards the local open-air museum which contained a number of historic houses and some sort of Swedish style flag pole which is danced around during mid-summer.

Open-Air Museum

The site was set river side and the autumn coulours were amazing. Red and golden trees everywhere, with evergreens interspersed between. Amazing.

Old Rowboats and a River

After this, we took a look at the oldest church in the town (I think it may have been from the 1300s!), and its amazing bell tower.

Autumn Bell Tower

Next we visited a spring which is well-known in these parts. It’s a place where people go to have BBQs in the summer, children run around on school trips spotting birds at 4am, and in the winter they may even ice skate here.

Natural Spring Water

While we were at the spring, we took a short walk in the surrounding forest, complete with bird houses and beautiful autumn trees.

Grumpy? Walkin' the walk!

That night we had some delicous tacos made by Marie and sat around talking for hours. She even showed me her photo albums from her trips to New Zealand. The photos brought back many memories, especially of her with the crazy perm she’d got! She told me all sorts of stories about her time in New Zealand. It turns out that she has seen much more o the country that I have, and that was fourteen years ago! Later that night her husband came home and I ended up looking at another bunch of photos of his trip to Nepal and India.

The following day, both Marie and her husband had the day off so they could show me around. The first outing we made was into the Swedish forest to see the cave which Per Gynt, the fabled huntsman, hid inside. (He is also the subject of a play by Norweigian playwrite Henrik Ibsen.)  The walk was beautiful, the forest was amazing with its autumn colours in full flourish.

Autumn Forest

After walking for a kilometer or two we got to the cave which was much smaller than I had thought it would be. Regardless of that, I decided to get inside it.

Inside Per Gynt's cave

After this we wandered into the forest a little further and ended up at Per Gynt’s gallows and also in a position for an amazign view over the local forest.

View from the Gallows

Later on we headed off to pick up Marie’s daughters, Gabriella and Rebecka from school. They finish at 1:30pm at their school so had time to make an excursion with us in the afternoon. We headed to the next town, Falun, 15km away, to take a tour through was what Europe’s largest Copper mine.

Falun Coppermine

We joined a tour which was to show us the mine and go through the history. It turns out the the mine had been running  for close to 900 years when it was closed in 1992. It has been set up as a place to made the common Swedish red paint and also for touring. The tour started at the top (the picture above) and then decended into the mine.

Decending the mine

For around 45 minutes we toured through the mine, seeing the 250m mine shaft, the old equipment which was used inside, we were told ancient stories about the ghosts of the mine, and at one stage all the lights were turned off. This was the darkest place I have ever been, there was absolutely no light, it was impossible to even adjust to the darkness.

That night was my last in Borlänge. The following day I headed back on the train to Stockholm.

Tromsø: Above the Arctic Circle

I landed in Tromsø at around 9 o’clock at night. Ula (the girl I was staying with) had given me pretty good instructions as to how to get to her place, so I decided not to follow them and got off at the wrong bus stop. This seems to be becomming a common theme of this trip. So, after wondering where in the world I was supposed to go, wandering around looking lost, I found my self in a psychiatric hospital – asking for directions. I was only 100m away!

I soon found my way up to the 5th floor of the Tromsø University student house where Ula lived. She was a Polish masters student of English Literature. I would spend two nights with her, and then I was to spend the following two nights in the room of her neighbour, Phil, who was a biology masters student, spending his time in a greenhouse germinating seeds taken from Svalbard. That night I also met a couple more students plus Phil’s friend Doris from Vienna. We all stayed up pretty late and Doris and I decided that the next day we would climb the local mountain which during the correct season is usually accessed by cable car.

The next morning I awoke and went out onto the deck. This was the view.

View from Ula's Deck

The weather was not so nice, but it wasn’t raining, so Doris and I set out for the mountain.
As we got close to the harbour, the mountain became visable. It dosen’t look so big, but I gaurantee you that it is definitely steep.

Climbable?

We crossed the massive bridge which links Tromsø to the mainland,

Bridge and Harbour

Passed the modern-style church,

Triangle Church

And headed up into the forest. The path was pretty crazy, it spent about and hour going along the bottom of the mountain and we figured that at this rate it was going to take forever to get to the top, zig-zagging across the mountain. After passing a good number of streams, we finally got to a more intesnse part which, more or less, went directly up.

Mountain Stream

It took about another hour of ascention to reach a point where we decided to go no further. It was freezing, windy and starting to rain. But the view was amazing.

View From Mountain

Me and the View

Soon it was starting to get dark so we began to make out decent. On the way down the sunset, though cloudy, was very amazing. Here is my favourite picture of it:

Mountain Sunset

That night Ula made a very nice Polish-style tomato soup and her and I and Doris and Phil all ate together and talked into the night. The following day Doris was going back to Oslo (where she studies German literature), so we made morning plans and then we all headed off to bed.

The next morning I awoke to this:

Morning View

The weather was amazing! Doris and I went walking again and had to stop and take pictures of the Tromsø Island lake on the way to town.

Central Lake

We got to town and decided that we wanted to walk to the very south end of the island. So we set off, passing some pretty cool street art,

Street Art

and Mack’s brewery, the world’s northern most beer brewery.

Macks Brewery

We never made it to the south tip of the island. We walked for so long but in the end it seemed as though Doris might miss her flight if we kept going. So we left the town goodbye and headed back to the student accommodation. Doris left for Oslo and I moved into Phil’s place. I then pitched the idea of tramping out into the darkness to Phil to try and see if the northern lights were going to show. He agreed, and after a nice dinner of vegetables and rice we bussed back into town, over the bridge, and walked up on of the cross-country skiing trails into the valley and beyond town’s visable light. We walked for hours and hours and the northen lights decided they were not going to show. I was not too happy about this, but cheered up after we did some interesting photography.

Phil and I

We had missed the last bus back but it was getting late and cold so we decided to make out way back home. When we reached the point where we could see the lights of Tromsø, we decided to take a few photos, the first looking like this:

Subtle Lights

We had to double take at the picture because there was definitely some green in there. The sky was almost blank but the photo showed up green. So we waited for a while. And sure enough, the northern lights appeared to us, albiet very subtly. I would have loved it to be amazing and bright and full of different colours, but I guess that it was a bit too early in the season. We watched the subtle green colours dance across the sky for around 20 minutes before they disappeared and then headed off home. We had been (mildly) victorious.

Subtle Lights

It was a long walk back with no bus to catch, but Phil and I got on so well that we never had nothing to say to each other, and we were home before we knew it. It was also very fun to throw rocks onto a frozen lake and listen to them bounce off emmitting a laser-gun like sound.

The following day I slept in. It was well deserved after all the time I have spent getting up early and walking around cities, etc. What happened that day was not a lot. But in the night Phil and I decided that we would do another night hike. So once again it was up the mountain for me. We got layered up in warm clothing, brandished head-lamps, and then set off along the forest trail. It seemed very different at night and we went much slower than I has previously gone with Doris. But soon we had made it as far as we thought we should go – this time we were not going to miss the last bus.

The view was very cool, and it was amazing how much orange from the city was reflected off of the clouds.

Orange City

The next morning it was time for me to head off, I had a lot of travelling ahead of me: A flight to Bodø, a night train to Trondheim, a day train to Oslo, one night in oslo, then a plane to Stockholm at 8am the next day, followed by a train to Borlänge where I was to stay with my childhood au pair, Marie.