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!

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.

Norweige: Olso

From Gothenburg I was off to Norway. I decided that I definately wanted to make it far north in Norway as I could, so I’d come back to Sweden later when it was too cold to be in the far north.

I boarded a 12:45 train headed for Oslo and found myself sitting with two Canadian brothers from British Columbia; ex paper-mill engineers. Garth and Trace. We talked about all sorts of nothing and they taught me a card game which I had never seen before called Cribbage. This was probably the most fun card game I’ve ever played, if not a little hard. But in saying that, I managed to win the first two games easily, losing the third by only a small amount.

After 5 or so hours, we arrived in Oslo. Off went the Canadians and I made a phone call to my 5th couch surfing arrangement –  Bård. With in ten minutes he had shown up and we were on our way walking to his girlfriends place where I was to stay because he was also staying there. It was me, another CouchSurfer (from Solvenia),  Bård, his girlfriend Matinka (from Solvakia), and 15 other flatmates!

Now I would like to run through all the other flatmates, but I only really remember one. This guy was called Shaun-Thomas, and when I asked him what he did, his response was something along the lines of: “I do some modeling and I work in a clothing shop. I have also trained in cook, waiter and was in the military. Oh… and I’m a RAPPER!” You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought – this guy looked like a male model. He told me that he had been rapping for 10 years and had, at some stage, laid down a track with Wutang.

So he asked me if I wanted to hear a rap, and OF COURSE I DID! It was actually really good! But I was laughing throughout the whole thing, just because the situation  was so ridiculous. That night I had dinner with  Bård and Matinka and then we headed out to a club called Blå which had a free twelve-piece swing/jazz band playing. The music was amazing, the band members were really funny, and everyone was dancing like mad. Although a good time, I didn’t stay too long as I was pretty tired.

The following day I hung out with the other CouchSurfer, the Slovenian girl. We ended up taking one of the longest day’s walking that I’ve had in this entire trip. After heading to the train station to buy tickets, we made out way towards the Royal Palace.

Royal Palace

After we checked out the palace, we decided to take a look at a park which was apparantly full of statues. We walked for miles to get to this place, and all the time I was thinking, “I’ve seen so many damn statues”. But this place turned out to be pretty amazing, there were hundreds and hundreds of statues all made by the same guy – it must have taken him years to complete them all. Some were crazy, many were naked figures in strange poses, and then there was the totem-orgy pole.

A small few of many statues

Totem-Orgy

While we were at this park, I noticed something off in the distance which at first I didn’t understand. But through fancy 6x optical zoom techniques, I found that it was a ski jump! People I talked to were very surprised that we have skiing in New Zealand but do not have a ski jump!

Olso Ski Jump

We decided to try and walk to it. The 6x optical zoom was decieving because after walking for almost an hour and a half, we appeared to be no closer than we previously were. We then gave up and walked for about two hours, all the way back to Matinka’s place, where the rest of the night was relatively relaxed as we watched a few films with a few of the other flatmates.

The next day the weather was crap. I had already decided that I wanted to go down and check out the harbourside so I began to walk. The further I walked, the worse the weather got but I was determined, and soon I made it to the Oslo fort.

Oslo Fort

The harbourside the day prior looked spectacular in the sparkling sun. Today it looked so bad that I’m not even going to post a picture up here. I decided to get out of the rain so headed to the Museum of Contemporary Art. This place was  pretty cool, it was full of (obviously) contemporary Norweigian art and a few international exhibitions, one which I had seen parts of in London’s Tate Modern.

Next I visited the Astrup Fearnly Museum of Modern Art which is currently housing an extensive Andy Warhol exhibition which was absolutely crazy. I never thought that I would see some of these very famous paintings of soup cans! Then back for another night of chilling.

One last day I had, and the weather was just as miserable as it was the previous day. This wasn’t going to stop me. My first place of visitment was the newly completed Opera House.

Opera House

One last stop. The Senersen Museum of Modern Art (yes, another one). And another chilling night as the following morning I was up at 6am to catch an early train to Trondheim!

Oslo, over and out.

(I apologise for the terrible writing within this post, I’ve been walking all day after a night train on which I didn’t sleep at all)