This post is by David, substituting for a walked-out GG.

Today, we visited La Cinque Terra (Pronounced CHINKway Terra, meaning five lands or five villages) is Italy’s newest national park.  The five villages are located on a rugged coast on the West side of Italy near Pisa.  This was for centuries and still is one of the most isolated parts of Italy.  Even today, there are no roads linking some of the villages to anywhere outside.  Everything comes in via the sea or, within the last 40 years, by rail.  There are only about 5,000 people who live in these villages.

If the villages are isolated the small vineyards that surround the villages are even more isolated, in many cases, accessible only by foot.  For those of you familiar with Provo, imagine trying to raise crops on the face of Y Mountain.  That’s how steep the farmlands are in La Cinque Terra.  The mountainsides are terraced using hand-built walls of dry stone.  In all, there are more than 7,000 kilometers of these dry stone walls.  If stretched end-to-end, they would rival the Great Wall of China for total length.  In many parts of the villages, your friends are either above you or below you, seldom next to you.

I took a zillion photos, but have time only to prepare two for posting.  One is the main square of one of the villages, showing the tiny harbor which was the only connection with the outside world for many hundreds of years.  The second photo shows what the coastline looks like.  You can see one of the villages nestled between the huge mountains in the distance.  On the mountain behind the village, the cleared areas are the farm land.

Click for larger versions of the photos.  We have a slow internet connection on the ship, so I reduced them in size.