More to see in Cinque Terre

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So, after hiking all of the five cities, we felt like we had accomplished one of the adventures required when one visits the Cinque Terre. Now, we wanted to see more of the area. After a great dinner, we really did not know exactly where we were going, but thought, maybe we should see more of the town we are staying in - Riomaggiore. Plus we wanted to work off some of dinner. So, us three girls walked through the town thinking it would only be a circle that would bring us back to where we were sleeping. But, it was much larger than we had thought and it started getting dark and we really did not now where we were. So, as the sky became darker, we roamed around, up a steep hill, in the pitch black!! You could hardly see the road. It was quite humorous, but a bit frightening because we didn´t want to fall off the side of some steep hill or trip down the stairs. The paths were narrow and unpaved and it really was quite dark! We were even a little concerned, but still had that nervous laughter you have at that point when you are quite lost, but have not crossed the line into that panic stage yet. Then out of nowhere came this older gentleman walking along this narrow path we were attempting to cross and somehow he guided us back to the stairs where it was lit! He was our guardian angel. Apparently, he was on his way to go fishing which is done at 1 or 2 in the morning! So we made it back and once again Sergio was waiting up for us.

The last day in Cinque Terre we decided to go on yet another adventure. Nadia was great for getting us into some interesting situations!! But, we had so much fun getting lost again. This time, the path headed away from the sea into this area of forest that at some points I think a machete would have been handy. We kept seeing the city of Groppo far behind us and were puzzled as to how to reach it. At one point we really thought we were not even on the path anymore. So we turned around. Sure enough, there hidden on a small rock was the red and white strips that the marked path to follow. What a journey! Once we got back on the trail and hiked up some random narrow stairs to what we thought would lead us to the town, we just stopped and were actually stumped as to where to go next. Oh yeah, there were NO, ZERO, NADA tourists on this path. But, it was so great! We sort of figured out on the map where we were and walked along this very wide horse trail, which eventually after about 1 hour led us to a little town. Ahhh! It was cute and we were starving! So we stopped to eat. The town was called Volastra. A side note: our whole adventure started out because we were looking for a town called Groppo and Cantina Sociale which is a coop wine producing place we thought would be worth checking out.

Anyhow, after lunch we figured we needed to hike back and we were NOT going to go back the same way, so we finally came across this wine coop. Well, let´s just say we were glad that was not our only destination. There was pretty much nothing to see except some vats and a little gift shop. They spoke no English and there was not even a bathroom to use. lol. it was okay though. We pressed on and headed back to town to prepare for the evening.

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Photos

Cooling off
Water was cold though

Dinner after hike
Met back up with Nadia

Wine "train"
They use to take this through the vineyards with the grapes

Via D'el Amour
The Romantic road