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Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Passo Giau

Today Jeremy and I hiked the Passo Giau which is a circuit around some impressive mountains. We actually hiked a lot more, taking into account a couple of wrong turns and back tracks. Around 8 hours all up.
Barry didn't join us as we have now established that heights are not his thing and today's hike included a couple of 'via ferrata', which literally means 'iron path' originating from the metal ladders used by the military in WWI to navigate these mountains. I.e. hiring harnesses and hard hats for a couple of very high narrow sections of track with very large and steep drops either side!

Needless to say, the views were spectacular and Jeremy and I had an epic day. We had great weather too which was remarkable considering there were brewing thunderclouds by the day's end. We got to the car just in time and we drove back to our apartment in torrential rain. Then, whaddayaknow, it all stopped just before we got there! Sweet!

Mountain flower

Selfie with mountain

Afternoon tea at Rifugio Scoiattoli - apple strudel and tea!

Another mountain flower

View from our back door this evening (photos are not in order)

View of the mountain pass from the car park before we hit the trails

I thought this might be Eidelweiss, but its not.

More pretty flowers

Jeremy high up on a mountain ridge

About to climb the 'harness and hat required' bit

Jeremy half way up the via ferrara

Me half way up

Another patch of pretty flowers

These were such an intense blue

And another type of flower

So many pretty flowers

Made it!

In between the mountain peaks were lots of meadows with pretty flowers like these

Spot the climber near the top!

A near perfect rainbow when we arrived back at our apartment.

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

A few days off the radar

We haven't had wifi for a few days so I've had an enforced break from Facebook and my digital networks.
I have however, been continuing to take photos of some of the sights and scenes we have seen and they have been spectacular.
After our few days in Trento, which was very Italian in look and feel, we picked up our rental car (a Jeep renegade) and drove to Moena. What a gorgeous place this was. It was like driving into a children's story book of Heidi or something. So many cute chalets in little villages with utterly majestic mountains surrounding them. We hired bikes and took the cable car to the top of a mountain then cycled around and down to the bottom again.
The next day we went for a walk up and around the valley.
Next we went from Moena to Bressanone where Barry met us after a full 12 hours of travelling (taxi-train-plane-bus-train-train). Here we hired bikes again and went on another epic bike ride. Once again we took a cable car right to the top of a mountain and then did some big loops and up and down valleys and eventually took a bunch of tracks down to the bottom.
The next day we headed off to Cortina stopping to do the world famous 'Tre Cime di Lavaredo' which Jeremy said would take around 3 hours.
6 hours later, after a spectacularly scenic hike, we managed to make it back to our car in one piece and drive onto our Airbnb.
So today we were still in Cortina. Barry and I took a break to rest our muscles and spent a day just meandering through the picturesque wee 'Austrian/Italian' town and I managed to catch up on some work. Jeremy on the otherhand, like the machine he is, went ahead and hired a bike again for another epic ride on his own.
So here are a few photos take since my last post in Trento...