We had a beautiful day of hiking and learning today. I love it when I enter a new area thinking one thing and by the end of the day have a new concept. Today brought a few of those brain “tingles.”
But first some statistics, since this was a hiking day. Our hike was from Monterosso, the most northern Cinque Terre village, to Vernazza, the second most northern. It is a popular route and I logged almost 6 miles, over 16,000 steps, and 178 minutes of exercise. No one who hikes will be surprised by that. The really interesting number is “flights climbed”: 59! A great many of my steps today were trod on actual steps!
To get north to Monterosso we took the ferry, which meant we were able to see each of the five towns from the sea. They are truly scenic; colorful, vertical, and seeming like engineering marvels, never mind that they are very pretty, old, and were built by hand.
Only four of the five villages have docks for the ferry (Corniglia must be reached by land), and in turbulent conditions the ferry has to skip some of the villages altogether. This understanding can get you thinking about the fishing conditions mentioned in my title.
We docked in Monterosso and had a chance to drink espresso and look around, including inside the church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist. It of course has the iconic black and white striped stones of the Genovese maritime influence.
We joined many other visitors walking to Vernazzo. The scenery was beautiful. The hike is hilly, of course. The path is more often than not stones, and very often actual steps. This leads to my first example of, “I came thinking this, but I now know that…”
I had imagined a thousand years of villagers using these paths to visit and trade from town to town. The paths, I learned, were for a different purpose. They were used by farmers. The landscape is a series of terraces– these have led to the designation of Cinque Terre as a UNESCO heritage site. The terraces are the only way to farm in such an extremely vertical environment. The main crops are grapes, olives and lemons.
In order to keep the terraces stable, the earth is secured by dry masonry rock walls. Miles and miles of them– up to 5,000 miles of dry stone walls, that have been holding back the earth since the year 1,000. They are constantly under repair. Today the rocks are loaded into large bags, then the bags are individually picked up, transported, and dropped in by helicopter.
No one was building paths to walk from village to village. They were building paths to pretty much stay in one spot and farm.
Which brings us to the strange title of the post: Why work so hard to farm when the sea is full of food for free?
What I learned: Hard as it was, farming was actually easier than fishing! Looking at the top photo of the post , the process of getting a fishing boat out to sea is difficult, even today. The crane lowers the boat. The fisher then has to use the stone steps to access the boat. Returning with fish, they and the boat have to be craned back into storage. There just isn’t a gentle harbor in this land where the mountains and cliffs run down to the sea.
When fishing was possible, the sea villages would be able to trade. Trade routes, though, were “vertical,” not “horizontal.” Each of the five Cinque Terre villages has a “sister” village higher in in the mountains. Those higher villages have somewhat more space to farm, and people moved up and down to trade crops and fish. I definitely did not arrive on this visit with that understanding!
We watched, with a bit of envy, as some kayakers came into shore. They had a tiny staircase to climb onto from their colorful boats. And storing the boats? We came upon a few hidden under a bridge. These are modern, molded plastic boats– keeping a heavy, wooden boat safe in olden days would have been really difficult.
After lunch we took a train from Vernazza to Riomaggiore, the southern most of the Cinqe Terre villages, then used the ferry to return to Portovenere.
The train is a whole interesting story by itself, but not for tonight. Let’s just say it is like the fishing and the paths…and not built to connect the Cinque Terre towns to each other or the rest of the country at all.
I am grateful to our excellent guides, Leonardo and Boris, for all this great learning (on top of all the logistics and guiding.)
2 Responses
We were there quite a few years ago and hiked from one town to another but never saw such a wonderful path as you pictured. It was a strenuous hike on a very hot day but the views were spectacular!
LOVE the final photo – I’ll call it: Cinque M&L in azzurro.
Also – the photo of the kayaks leaning up against the wall – fantastico!