Framura

A little after I moved out to Pisa and post-Facebook location update, I happened to receive a message asking me if would be interested in joining an 'English speaking Ligurian Hiking group based around Genoa". Now any person, group or establishment that lists 'speaking English' as part of their charter or agenda, gets me interested - simply because my painfully slowly increasing Italian vocabulary currently only lets me greet people, tell them that I shall meet them later/tomorrow/next week and ask whether something has meat in it - which is for all practical purposes useless to say, locate a dance class that teaches salsa. To cut a pointlessly long irrelevant description about unrelated things short, I joined the group.

The first trek after I joined I was unable to go to owing to absolute laziness. The next one was interesting - it promised a climb up to a certain Mt. S.Agata and in the process trek through a swamp which was purported to have yellow irises blooming in it. And all this was to be rounded off with a trek down to a pebbled beach off the tourist radar and enjoy a nice swim in blue waters of the Ligurian Sea. Having heard and seen enough to know that beaches elsewhere in the world are quite unlike beaches in India (and pebbled to boot) and the proximity to the famed Cinque Terre, I clicked 'Attending' and started mentally figuring out how to get there. The trek was on a Saturday and I planned to spend the next day trekking around Cinque Terre alone. Unfortunately, the weather played spoilsport and the forecast was heavy rain. Little did I know that this luck was to continue in future excursions as well.

I reached the appointed spot at the appointed hour and we started off with a bus ride to Castagnolla - the first of the five hamlets. After alighting at the little picturesque hamlet and packing paninos at the local grocery shop we proceeded towards St. Agata. After consulting several maps and a couple of hours of picking our way through the mountainsides, battling nettles and thorns and shrubs, we gave up deciding that the path to the top did not exist. The plan then settled on skipping on to the next bit - which was essentially hiking through the five hamlets along the cobbled path and then landing up at the beach near the Framura railway station.

We got on with the hiking passing through shady and leafy paths strewn with pine cones and lined with olive, peach and cherry groves. On the way we stopped at a little bridge over a gurgling stream for lunch and a photo of the group. After a short but breezy uphill stretch we reached Costa. Costa is set into the mountainside and has panoramic views of the sea and the coves. It also has a watchtower from the times of Charlemagne which is in excellent condition. Down the hillside from Costa is Ravecca. We more or less just tumbled through Ravecca - just stopping long enough to look at a couple of churches and chapel and quaint doors, since everyone wanted to get to the next Bar for a gelato (ice-cream). After passing through narrow streets, some of it which went through a small tunnel under houses we reached Setta with the sun blazing mercilessly down on us.

Thankfully the bar was open and everyone settled outside with their gelato, while I quickly downed a cold beer and started to explore the little hamlet. It took me about a quarter of an hour to do so - a handful of houses and one big main street and a couple of small side ones. When I got back to the bar, they were still eating the last of their ice-creams and animatedly swapping stories in the typical don't-care-rat-about-time Italian attitude. I settled down in a corner and quietly listened. A little later when everyone was done, we started the last leg passing through Anzo and then over the train track at Framura and on to the beach.

The beach was a tiny little beach with probably ten or fifteen people alternating between taking a dip in the azure clear waters of the Ligurian sea and sunbathing. I took a quick dip - the water was much colder than I'd thought it would be given the how hot the weather was. Swimming with my glasses is understandably a pain because they tend to slip off and without them just makes me terribly disoriented. After splashing around for a little while and then giving up, I changed. It was getting close to 5 PM and I had a long three-and-a-half-hour train journey back to Pisa. I said my ciaos and arrividecis and went to the station. Fifteen minutes later the train arrived and I had a long uneventful ride back to Pisa in the company of loud and sometimes uncouth American tourists - composed mainly of just out of highschool kids saying "like" every three words and middleaged families that said "like" every six words.