Consuma to Stia Tuesday May 19

Consuma to Stia Tuesday May 19

                                                                   Current Day                                Trip to Date                            

Miles Walked                                                14.8                                            77.3

Feet Climbed                                                1450                                            8010

Songs of the Day: Whispering Pines by the Band

Whispering pines, rising of the tide...

I will wait until it all goes round

With you in sight, the lost are found

One of my favorite songs by the Band, sung by one of the great mournful rock voices of all times, Richard Manuel.  Check out the terrific Counting Crows song "Richard Manuel is Dead" where Adam Durwitz is saddened to learn that Richard Manuel had died.  Also, listen to  the excellent new Boz Scaggs album, which contains a duet version of "Whispering Pines" with Lucinda Williams, the queen of sad singing (I mean that in a good way!).  

When we woke up this morning, we had an excellent outdoor breakfast at the B &B.  There's something about the way the Italians make cappuccino that is unmatched anywhere in the world.  

A car then took us back to where we ended up yesterday to begin our hike.   Funny enough, the place we stayed last night is only a few miles from Stia, where we ended up tonight!  

Today was a beautiful walk through a heavily wooded forest.  There was a breeze all day, causing the tall pine trees to sway, and sound like they were indeed "whispering.  We are hiking at around 3000 feet right now and the air is very clean and alpine like.  

The walk today was almost a mirror image of yesterday: yesterday, we climbed 4500 feet and descended around 1400 feet.  Today, we climbed 1450 feet and descended 3200 feet.  Tomorrow, we have a very challenging day, with a climb of over 4500 feet and a descent of over 3000 feet.  All the climb of yesterday combined with all the descent of today.  There will be very little level ground on this hike.  The hike tomorrow takes us into the National Park of the Casentine Forest and  promises to be a spectacular walk.  It will include a stop at a famous Monastery called the Hermitage of Camadoli.

We have now had three of the best days of hiking we have ever experienced.  The next two days look to be more of the same.  The walks have been  physically challenging and the sites are spectacular. Although we have been to Tuscany many times in the past, we have never been to the eastern portion where we are hiking.  It really is quite special to experience this.

Here are some representative shots of our walk today:

About half way through our walk, we came upon a donkey farm (I should have written this down, but it was called something like "asimina").  For about 10 minutes, we  watched a woman trying to get two donkeys into a van.  It was quite amusing, because those damn donkeys did not want to budge!

Stia is a nice little village, with all the usual features:  lots of churches, several bars, a COOP store (basically a grocery store chain in much of Europe) and a few restaurants.  Unfortunately, many of those restaurants were closed because it's Tuesday, and we ended up eating pizza at a sort of crappy pizza place.  The good news is, we had an outstanding lunch at the other restaurant in town today, so that made up for it.

One other point- there is no internet in this hotel.  So, I am a couple of days behind in posting.  Hopefully we will have internet tomorrow....