JULY 19th

3 euro hostel breakfast. jam filled croissant. strong coffee. yoghurt. cereal. pre-packed toast!
9am bus to la spezia. wanted to catch 10am train to Monterosso but was delayed 1hour6min! they kept making announcements extending the delay time (15min, 25min, 40min, 45min, 1hour). was ludicrous! even the italians were getting pissed and they're used to the shitty service! we're used to super efficient Tokyo trains being on time all the time... unless someone's jumped of course!
finally came and got to Monterosso 17min later! all that waiting for such a short ride!
but it's a heck of a walk!

hit the beach. 12euro50 for parasol, sunbed and chair rental for half a day (9 - 2pm or 2pm - 7pm)! could have public beached it but thought we'd try some luxury!
sand was burning hot. upper part of beach wasn't quite sand, more like really small pebbles. closer to water, pebbles got bigger.
water was perfect. very calm and clear. like Nice, got deep quickly.

did something i'd never do in Oz. swam out bout 100m from shore to a buoy. Oz ocean is too strong, dangerous and shark fear is ever present. here water is calm and although it's deep, can always see the bottom. lose most of shark fear, but still in the back of mind. you always read in books about "his instincts screamed at him to turn back". actually experienced that feeling! the further i went out, was like a little voice in the back of my head screaming "go back now! there are sharks! you're getting too tired! there's sure to be a rip somewhere out here!" but i ignored it and kept going. shark fear got really bad when swam over a strip of big rocks out deep cos there were schools of decent sized fish swimming around but was nothing there.
got to buoy and hung on for a while to rest for a bit. looked back for the first time and realized how far out i was and how stupid i was! :-)
chilled for a bit more then headed back to shore. bout halfway back felt like throwing up, but just took it easy switching between breaststroke and scissor style.
jee was standing on shore waiting and berated me for going out so far. still felt like purging, but i was like a little boy with his mum "did you see me?! did you see how far i went?!" :-)

chilled on the beach for a bit longer. coupla grannies were topless and for the first time, a coupla younger chicks too!
left beach at 2pm so we didn't have to pay for full day and moseyed around Monterosso a bit before hitting the trail linking it to Vernazza, the next town along the Cinque Terre.

we'd heard from a guy at the hostel (from Houston, Texas who'd actually checked out and was on the train to his next destination when he discovered that he'd lost his passport! came back to the hostel to stay for another coupla days and see if he could find it!) that it was best to start from Monterosso and walk thru the five to Riomaggiore cos the walk from Vernazza is the hardest, so that's what we did.

he wasn't bloody kidding!

i blame the fact that i swam for about an hour before hiking (any excuse!) and that i'm an asthmatic (any excuse no. 2!) AND that it was bloody hot as hell (any excuse no. 3!), but i was in a very bad state by the time we reached Vernazza. i wondered if all that hiking up Mt Lofty was of any use! maybe i would've been even worse off if we had Lofty-ed it!
my legs were shaking. i felt a bit dizzy. felt like throwing up for the second time that day! found a bench and chilled out for a fair while. it was about an hour and a half walk, but a lot of it is up and down (mostly up!) steep steps and even when we were climbing Mt Lofty, whenever we'd hit the steep parts, my breathing would get really laboured.

i'm uphill allergic!
:-)

found a sign that you'd see if you were heading from Vernazza to Monterosso, that stated:
Warning
In summer it is recommended to hike only in early morning or late afternoon.

they were right!
we had some gelati, bought another big bottle of water (had already gone thru two!) and a 500mL bottle of powerade which was aptly named Mountain Blast and i downed in a coupla minutes.

we started on our way again. i was inspired by Andrew "Bungy" McLeod (an Adelaide Crows football player for those heathens who are unaware!) who will sometimes after a break will throw up on the sideline then just have a drink and play the rest of the game like a star! if McLeod can do it, so can i! ;-) although there is a slight difference in physical fitness between us!

bout half hour out of Vernazza was a little bar. downed another bottle of powerade and kept on to Corniglia. was challenging, but nowhere near as difficult as the first trek.
the next village was Manorola and linking between Manorola and Riomaggiore is what they call Lover's Lane and it was really nice with the sun getting close to setting.

headed back to La Spezia and then back to the hostel. the trek in total took about 6 hours but with plenty of breaks along the way.
we slept well that night!

the 20th and 21st i've already rambled on about, but i have to say it again...

The Last Supper baby! ;-)

have just spent the last coupla nights in Venice which was gorgeous and i'll write more about later cos we've almost arrived in Florence!

god i've eaten so much pizza and gelati over the last week! :-)

(heavy) evBSc