Our destination, Monterosso one of the towns in the Cinque Terre. Plan for the day, hike a little, lay on the beach...sounds like a wonderful day to me!
We arrive in Monterosso after a two and a half our train ride, which really wasn't that bad, the seats a little uncomfortable but the company was good! I'm starving when we get there, and I tell Nikki that if I don't get food, I will most likely eat her arm. So sure enough, we find a place for food! Monterosso is a cute little town with a lot of beach and places to layout and relax. Although we had other plans. HIKE!
So off we go. And as we are walking around the town we see many prime jumping places for a little (dangerous) fun in the water. And of course we see a group of American boys taking advantage of these locations. Me and Jessica almost joined them! But alas, we had our hike ahead of us.
I really don't think I had realized the intensity of this walk between the cities. Maybe none of us had. Laura, Nikki and I were the only ones wearing tennis shoes, and I can't even imagine doing this in flip-flops. I mean I am uncoordinated enough, I mustn't add to such a disability! The first section of this hike was about 850 stairs. My legs were jello afterwards. Not only are these HUGE steps, especially for my little legs, they are really narrow too, so only one person can walk up or down them at a time. So what do you do when someone happens to meet you mid climb?....CRISIS! Well in some areas there are small (TINY) clearings of trees where you can step off to the side, and in the places where there is not a clearing...well you end up doing this weird little dance with random people you don't know who are just as sweaty as you are. It's funny. So on our hike I took about a million pictures. The view was beautiful!
And then we were in Vernazza! We had made it through the hike and now were rewarded with some beach time! It wasn't an extremely sunny day, which was very nice during our hike because it wasn't a million degrees (not to say the hike was easy for that reason). But now laying on the beach it was almost a little chilly. Windy at times, which made the water pretty choppy...but did that stop me from jumping off a huge rock into the water? The first time I went out to the pier and looked at the water it was so choppy that it was splashing a good two feet up over the pier edge. And Laura said..no amanda I think you should wait. So we went back and took a little nap on the beach. Then I was pumped, READY TO GO! And Jen said she wanted to do it with me. Yay! Now I have a buddy! So off we go to the pier to see how the waters doing now. Well we see that these three boys have already jumped in and are now trying to get out. Quite a difficult task it looked like. And because the waves were so huge the boys could get a grip on the edge of the pier before it came splashing over them and pulled them back out. So what they tried to do was swim with the wave and have it push them up over the pier. They were successful, however it did look kind of painful. I didn't want to do that. The Nancy Drew in me came out and I investigated the scene, finding a small ladder over the far edge near the rocks. Yes! Thats my escape route!
So me and Jen prepare for the jump. And we prepare...and we prepare. Okay I'm not going to lie the waves were huge and we were a little nervous. These two italian guys were standing a couple feet away and watching us and just laughing because we would count 1...2...3...NO! And then just laugh really hard. Finally we grabbed each others arms and just ran off the edge. It was insane, the waves pushed us around under the water (but don't worry, we didn't die) and then getting to the ladder I had scoped out was a task in it's self! Jen grabbed a hold of it first, so I just kind of floated behind waiting for a good wave to come so I could grab it. Well that wave came..and it was a lot stronger than I had thought and pushed me a few feet past the ladder and closer to my imminent death by rocks. After a few tries, and multiple waves crashing over me, I grabbed the ladder and climbed out as quickly as possibly. I would be lying if I said my heart wasn't pounding and I wasn't scared of those rocks and the huge waves. But the second I got out all I felt was adrenaline and was like LETS DO IT AGAIN!
So we did! This time Laura joined us for the dangerous fun.
After all making it out in one piece, we decided that the waves were getting way too choppy for a third round and went to lay on the beach and listen to the music (Summer Lovin, Greece Lightning, the Macarena). Who do Italians think we (americans) are? Haha.
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