For 30 € a night I decide to stay here for one more night and keep on moving tomorrow. I can’t stay at hotels all the time and staying in my tent somewhere in the woods up here in the mountains is just too cold. I’m sure J. catches up in a few days…
Day 21
Leaving Polistena a few people saw me passing by a café. I must say that many are curious when they see me with my backpack. And for me it’s always fun to stop for a while and talk to people, mostly in italian but sometimes it’s a mix of languages: italian, spanish, english, german, hand & feet. Meeting all those strangers, see their curiosity and their kindness, that is for to me how livin’ is done!
Back to trail: after leaving town it was a long(-ish) uphill climb, mostly road-walk. About 20 km into the day I found trail-marks again and I decided to go back into the woods. The Aspromonte National Park is a real beauty and wild. Sometimes there is no trail to follow and I just walk from one trail-mark to another. Often the next one comes into appearance when you reach the one in sight. So there I walk through the woods in wintertime, the ground is wet and muddy. I suppose the best time to hike here is in spring when it’s warm and everything is in bloom. But now it’s cold, maybe 2 – 4 degrees with high humidity, walking is okay but standing still makes me freeze in no-time. That and the wet, muddy ground make some days a Type-2 fun day.
It’s not only beautiful here, it’s also pretty lonely. Today I passed by a herd of goats with no shepherd around but at least two sheperd-dogs. Once they spotted me they approached me aggressively and it sure was a good idea to move fast to the direction I came from. As they kept running after me I ran behind a curve and hid behind a large boulder. Unable to move for at least 10 minutes I stood still and listened to every noise, praying that the dogs would leave me alone. After a little eternity I decided to take a look with my hiking-poles fully extended in one hand and my knife firmly in the other one prepared to battle for life. Luckily the herd and the dogs were gone. Slowly I started walking again. “No one hears you scream!” was my only thought…
Anyways, I made it out alive and eventually I reached today’s destination, Fabrizia. Or at least I thought it would be. I realized pretty quickly that this little town has no place for me to stay, neither a hotel nor a place for my tent to pitch. Fabrizia, however, was the town J. and I agreed to meet again. I’m was sure that he won’t be here before tomorrow evening at the earliest. What shall I do? First I went to the specific café we agreed on, the Starlight Bakery, a pretty cool place with delicious pastry by the way and free wi-fi. After logging in J’s message pops up saying that he made it to San Luca this late morning and he’s heading out to Fabrizia now. “Whaaat?” I think, San Luca is only 32 km out of Gambarie, which we left 3 days ago. The trail must have been brutal and he still has 80 km ahead of him before he gets here. I assume it’s at least 3 days, more likely 4. What now? I decided to leave him a note at the café and go to next town, as there is an affordable hotel I could stay, people told me. It’s raining and pitch dark but after two more hours I arrived at the hotel…and that’s where I am right now writing my blog. The hotel is affordable and clean. What do I do tomorrow? Do I wait here or keep moving? I think I decide this tomorrow. I hope J. is alright.
No pictures were taken today and I’m pretty sure you know where to find them by now.
And, as always, the stats.
Day 20
As I am still not all the way down in the valley I started out for another 10 km downhill before I’m going to face a 45 km climb again to the town of Fabrizia where I hopefully meet J. again in a few days.
After around 17 km I passed through a small town, found a little shop where I bought a new pen & journal and a café I decided to sit in for while. Here I sit now and bring my journal up-to-date as I had to sacrifice my old one to start the fire back in the hut at Etna. While writing this, I enjoy a hot tea. 🙂
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A few hours later
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I sat at the café for about one hour before I got back on my feet to hike. Shortly after that it started to rain but I walked for another 4 hours to the town of Polistena and I decided to stay here at a hotel for the comfortable price of 45 € incl. breakfast. It’s time to dry my clothes.
For pictures visit our album on fb “E1 – That’s how livin’ is done!” or www.instagram.com/jaredturtlechip.
Day 19
Today J. and I decided to go separate ways for a few days. While he decided to follow the Sentiero Italia (SI) further high up into the mountains, may plan was to hike the road for a few days and stay below snow-level of around 1100 m. My experience on Etna was enough snow-adventure for a while and rather poor trail-maintenance of the SI yesterday made my decision for hiking the road easy.
Hiking the road meant to walk downhill all day. After breakfast we started late at around 10 a.m. but I still hiked 30 km. I found a nice flat camp-spot under some olive-trees. The temperature is okay, maybe around 5 degrees and the sky is clear. Even though road-walking is definitely not my favorite, I had a good day.
For more pictures visit our album on fb “E1 – That’s how livin’ is done!” or www.instagram.com/jaredturtlechip.
Hiking-stats are here.
Day 18
After a lazy day in Reggio di Calabria and a hearty breakfast at the Guest Housewe started at around 9 a.m. to head for Gambarie, a small town in the mountains roughly 32 km away. Our plan was to pitch our tents 2 km before town at a rest-area.Today was all about going uphill, a long long 32 km uphill hike. I didn’t feel too confident about today in the morning but I was more fit than I thought. The climb went easy for me. Arriving at the rest-area I found that place very wet with many puddles and snow. I waited for J. to arrive and we decided to go into town and find a warm place to stay for night…so we did.
Is there anything else to say about today? – Hmmm, yes. I didn’t expect to find any trail-marks, but there were quite a few (at weird placed). Some however led us on rather unpleasant, not maintained trails so I decided to road-walk most of the day.
As always, find more pictures on fb in our album “E1 – That’s how livin’ is done!” or at www.instagram.com/jaredturtlechip.
For stats of hiking click here.
Day 17
Pfff, we were lazy, took a day off in Reggio di Calabria. We found a nice little Guesthouse, the Pellicano Guest House – two thumbs up.
Day 13 – 16
You may ask, why do I summarize 4 days in one post? Because it all comes down to a simple formula every long-term hiker comes down to : Eat, Sleep, Hike, Repeat. That’s basically all we did in the last few days. We covered around 140 km in those four days. We didn’t talk much, enjoyed the hike and the scenery and looked forward to finishing Sicily.
But still there are a few things to mention. For example the hotel we stayed at in Castiglione di Sicilia, the Cento Tari’s Guest House. A beautiful little place with an amazing breakfast. We had to stay there because we needed to resupply in Castiglione di Sicilia for the next days but the supermarket is always closed on Wednesday afternoon. So we stayed for the night. This night was followed by a strong uphill climb and a miserable night. Jared pitched his tent on a table in a rest-area, I decided to pitch my tent on snow on a hill. We both didn’t sleep too well and that’s all I want to say.
The next day, Day 14 and Friday it is, we had a good day and a fun hiking-day. It was quit a long descend followed by a gnarly uphill climb, not very long but quite steep. Afterwards we finally came to the path we shall follow for the next two days. A few km into that way we meet Angelo sitting in his Bulldozer all by himself clearing the path from gravel and rocks. As he probably didn’t expect any hikers, he curiously asked where we are heading. With our little knowledge in the italian language and his not-knowledge of english we had some fun to explain him that we are on the way to Norway. He got so excited about us that he asked us to please call him when we get there. He couldn’t resist but giving us his bag of cookies, prob ably his wife made for him…if I understood him right. Before we had to say good-bye we had to take selfies, of course…Jared and I are already looking forward to calling him. The conversation without hands and feet will be very interesting. Here is Angelo, us and a bag of cookies:
After a few more km we found a nice place for the night. That night was very cold, freezing.
Day 15 went by quickly.
Day 16: we finally made it to the nort-eastern tip of Sicily to Messina and because we missed the last ferry to Reggia di Calabria on mainland Italy, we are staying at a hotel again.
If you want to see more picture, please visit our album on fb “E1 – That’s how livin’ is done” or click on www.instagram.com/jaredturtlechip.
For all you stats-freaks here you find them for
Day 10
There is so much snow on the trail. Even though it was only 4.5 km and about 200 m in elevation gain to the highest point it took us a little over 2 hrs to get there. From there on it was downhill. But it was very hard nevertheless. We post-holed every step knee-deep in powdery snow. We were wet and cold. We are the first ones up here making footsteps in the snow. Halfway down it got a bit easier as we found other people’s footsteps to step in. I was just about to give up on this part of the trail and descend to town when Jared convinced me to keep pushing just a little bit more. Just when we couldn’t take another step we found this little Refugio. It was unlocked and we entered. We were so happy to find fire-wood. It took us about 1 hr. to get the fire started but we made it. Now we can dry our clothes and sleep inside by the fire. It’s raining, but right now we don’t care.
Tomorrow will be another tough day. I hope we finally get off this volcano.
For more pictures visit our album on FB or www.instagram.com/jaredturtlechip.
For stats click here.
Day 9
Last night was cold. My tent was covered in a thin layer of ice – at the outside as well as on the inside.
We wanted to hike some serious distance but we managed only around 22 km (I know the stats say differently but I don’t know why yet…). The morning started out okay and we passed by Refugio Manfré. We stopped there for some warm tea and had a nice conversation with the owner, nice guy. He was very interested in our adventure and told all his friends coming in about us. We had to answer many questions. They gave us some information about our path around Etna. We decided to go to a Refugio only 10 km. away, but eventually didn’t make it there. Shortly after leaving Manfré our path was covered in snow. Post-holing and steep uphill slowed us down to around 2 km/hr. We found another Refugio on the way and decided to stay here. Unfortunately it was closed, but we agreed on pitching our tents anyways. We had to pitch on snow and it started to snow. At least we found a spot underneath a roof and we are protected from the wind. Temperature is going to drop way below zero and I don’t even bother to get out of my clothes. Another freezing cold night…
For more pictures visit our album on FB or www.instagram.com/jaredturtlechip
For stats click here.
Day 8
Even though we started late, maybe around 10 a.m., we walked 30 km and made it to Belpasso; we resupplied here for two days only. Now I sit in my tent and worry a bit that it may not be enough. I really don’t know what to expect for the upcoming days. I hope everything turns out well.
Tonight will be freezing. It’s 6 p.m. and the temperature is around 0 degrees Celsius. There are no clouds in the sky, which looks beautiful but it’s gonna get really cold.
Find pictures on our FB album or at www.instagram.com/jaredturtlechip
For hiking-stats click here.