Day 10 (Crazy hike)

Wednesday, the day of the big hike. But before I tell about that it's time for a geography lesson. Intragna, the village next to the one we stayed in, is right on the meeting point of two valleys, Centovalli and Valle Onsernone. As I told you in Day 9, the Roman Bridge is in Centovalli. Our hike however was going to take us through a part of Valle Onsernone and would start in Loco (what's in a name), take us across the river Isorno and lead us via Intragna back to Cavligiano.

Loco is about 400 meters higher up the mountain and about 8 km further into Valle Onsernone than Cavligiano. The only road between them is a rather narrow and winding road, populated by a lot of locals and buses who drive up and down it as if it's a 4 lane highway. So instead of risking our lives we'd decided to take the bus from Cavligiano to Loco. Which leads me to another little detour in the story. Most bus lines in Switzerland are run by the national postal service (external site) an in most mountainous places these buses also deliver the mail to all the mountain villages. Sort of like in medieval times, when there were post carriages for both person and mail transport. A good thing to know when you're driving in the Swiss mountains is that these buses always have the right of way. For all other vehicles the rule is that the one coming down the mountain has the right of way.

The 15 minute bus ride was really nice with lots of nice views and I think that Sandra was very glad that she didn't have to drive :-) Anyway, once arrived in Loco we made our way to the start of the trail. And believe me trail is exactly the right word here. Before the real road existed, the only connection between Intragna and Loco was this trail. Back in those days the people transported everything on mules or on their back.

The trail starts quite easy, almost a stroll through the outskirts of Loco. Outskirts meaning, the occasional farmhouse and some vineyards. Once you hit the forest the descent starts. We had to loose about 250 - 300 vertical meters and there wasn't a lot of mountain to loose it on. I.e. the track soon became a sort of stairs with steps made out of boulders that someone once must have painstakingly gathered, carried and made into steps. The stairs (for lack of a better word) meandered down the mountain and finally lead us to a bridge over the river Isorno.

Looking down at it with sweat dripping from our foreheads the river looked really cool and inviting. However swimming didn't seem to be an option as there were loads of signs around to warn us of the danger of unexpected and fast rising water. Due to the hydroelectric plant further up the river. So instead of going swimming we hauled our butts across the bridge and started our (luckily not so steep) ascent on the other side.

Slowly but surely we were regaining the height we'd started off at in Loco and from there on the trail continued more or less level along the side of the valley. About 2/3rds into the hike the forest opened up and lead into a grassy spot with some old houses dotted around it.

The only road leading to these houses was the very trail we were on. But the inhabitants had found a way around that, as they'd built a little privately run .... ehhh... how do you call these things??? Think of a cable connecting two points through the air and a little cab (?) hanging on the cable to transport people. The dictionary lists it as cableway. Anyway, they had one of those spannings across the valley to the other side where the regular road is.

A little further down the trail we got a great view through the valley all the way to Lago Maggiore (the lake).

Around this time our tummies started to complain, so time for a break and some more of that loverly bread.

Soon after which we started our descent towards Intragna, bumping into more cute houses (check out that palm tree) and the occasional local inhabitant.

About halfway into our descent to Intragna we bumped into an unexpected treat, which for some of us was too hard to resist.

And more of the local wildlife.

Before we knew it we'd arrived in Intragna and quickly decided that we weren't too tired to walk the last kilometer or two to Cavligiano.

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