New Horizons

July 02, 2018

Our view on the morning of our first day in Italy. A very nice welcome indeed!
(San Lorenzo)

We drove through the Italian border late on Tuesday night and kept driving till we reached San Lorenzo. In the morning we were treated to a wonderful view as we woke up. – The sparkling blue sea stretching out from beneath our feet, as we had been blessed to find a park right on the edge of a road that overlooked the ocean.

I got up earlier than the others this time as I was keen to explore our new destination and then Phoebe and Fern joined me for a before-breakfast-swim. Lovely! It was already a delicious 30 plus degrees so a swim was just the thing.

We decided to get the bikes down and ride into the little town to find the usual things- water, toilet and internet. (Only toilets were found in this trip – internet hotspots have been very scarce.) It felt good to have the freedom of the bikes again as it has been some time since we’ve used them.

Italy feels a little like a cross between France and Spain – at least in this north-west section. The buildings are almost all tall and colourful – not many ancient ones as of yet, but fairly well maintained with lovely stone streets.

San Lorenzo - our first day in Italy

The drivers here though! Yikes! Scooters everywhere – zooming up from behind cars, whizzing by with no thought to their own safety it would seem! We’ve noticed a bit of aggression towards us too by people in their cars – we’re too slow (patience was definitely lacking on the roads) and so they do their best to try and get by with very little thought to oncoming traffic. This has been very hair-raising at times! We’ll do our best I think, to stay out of the cities. It’s definitely not easy maneuvering around in the camper.

We stayed in San Lorenzo for two nights then made our way around the coast, coming across cities in almost every bay. That day we drove nearly the whole day (from 10am till 1:30am) and only really covered 200km. The roads are pretty good, but we’re having to drive about 30km a lot of the time as we are going through so many towns. We’ve been trying to avoid the toll roads but decided that on a day like that we’d end up spending more dollars in diesel, than on tolls.

Esmae and Phoebe snorkelling

The last few days we’ve spent on the Cinque Terre coast. There are five beautiful little towns dotted around the rocky coastline which have a famous pathway joining them together.

Overlooking Monterosso- one of the towns on the Cinque Terre coast

It was a beautifully hot day, and we tried taking the camper down the road to the village we were close to but were warned by many signs that the road was too steep. Josh’s idea was to spend the day walking the famous track – which would have been nice – except.. well, ashamedly, we ended up using all our energy walking to the town which was miles down a hill in scorching sun (and the thought of walking up again was very daunting).

When we got to the little town, which looked so sleepy from up above on the hills, it was absolutely teeming with people. We were so boiling hot, so headed to the very inviting looking water and the beach which was so full of people the sand almost couldn't be seen. Josh popped into the info center to check out prices of the walk and the return train, but we discovered only half the track was open and it was going to be pretty expensive anyway. So we ended up having a relaxing lunch in the shade of some trees instead and then started making our way up the hill. It was a relief to see the camper again at the top and we all lined up for a cold shower outside the window of our 'bathroom', where we could stretch the shower hose outside. (Josh in the meantime in his usual exuberant style had run on to the next village so he could at least have done some of the track. - He's quite the machine!)

One of the coves at Monterosso

The following day we went to one of the villages further around the coast and did a similar thing though this time Josh thought he'd give his muscles another workout by carrying the inflatable kayak all the way down the hill. Again, the town looked so quite from up above but when we got down to the waterfront there were people everywhere, and hundreds more coming every ten minutes on a big ferry which pulled into the rocky harbour. Josh blew up the inflatable while we found a spot to settle on the beach which was filled with boulders this time, and once he had paddled around to join us we swam out to clamber on board and paddled around the coast, enjoying seeing the big schools of fish swimming underneath us.
And then there was the walk back up the hill...