Snow Patrol

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Our last day in the Dolomite Mountains, and with one cable car and one chair lift left to ride in the Val Gardena, we hit the road today at a more leisurely pace. The weather had turned a little cooler overnight, so we brought our warmer clothes just in case.



We drove to the town of St Christina, and called into one of the local woodcarving retail shops. All of the items on display had been carved by craftsmen in the valley, and we purchased a few small items. It was interesting talking to the wood carver, who had spent some time living in Australia. It took the wood carver ten days to craft the figure in the blog photo.



We then headed on up the hill overlooking the town, to catch the Monte Pana Chair Lift. When we arrived at the top of the hill, we found the car park to be full of Classic European Cars, the drivers of which were about to start out on a Car Rally. We spent some time looking over the old Jaguars, Mercedes, Minis, Fiats, Porsches etc, then headed up to catch the semi enclosed chair lift. The chair lift ride was different to what we had previously experienced at Val Gardena, in that we could literally lift up the safety bar and Perspex canopy (which we did to get some photos of some grazing sheep).



After walking around on the plateau, we caught the chair lift back down, and then drove into St Christina to catch the cable car up to Col Raiser. We were getting cold up on the mountain taking photos, so we had to call into the restaurant and warm up with coffee (and Apple Strudel). After taking the cable car back down to St Christina, we realised we had time to catch one last ride up a mountain. We opted for Passo Sella, the massively high pass which we did yesterday, where we have to run, jump and then get shut into a tall fibreglass car, which fits a maximum of two persons, to carry us up an almost vertical incline.



When we arrived at the Passo Sella, it was lightly snowing, and there had been a reasonable snowfall overnight. We trudged through the snow, following some trails, looking for some interesting photo shots. By the time we had finished taking our photos, it was getting very cold (temp at Passo Sella was 0 degrees), and we had to have another coffee to warm up.



After finishing our coffee, we braved the snow outside, and ran, jumped and were locked into our cable car as it descended over the edge of a precipice. After alighting from the cable car, it was time to head for home. Our time in the Dolomite Mountains has been great, but it is time to move on tomorrow to Lake Garda in Northern Italy. Liz and Darrol are heading off to Munich.

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Comments

[Sabina]

Fantastic trip guys and awesome work with the blog. Enjoy !! Lots of love xx