Of course.
But first.
It was my last day in the Cinque Terre. I had to be out of my apartment by 10:30 AM and, although I could leave on any train, I planned on leaving in the late afternoon. Why rush away from such a glorious place. I was booked “ordinario” for “ritorno” so the time I departed was insignificant.
Contrary to my nature I got up much earlier than I had to, because I wanted to spend some quality time on my balcony before leaving. It was a beautiful morning. A few clouds were scattered across the sky and the air was warm.
Lorenza (remember, Giovanni’s “woman”) is the housekeeper for this property (since the place actually belongs to Giovanni and the Gianni Franzi only acts as the booking agent). At any rate, among the employees of the Gianni Franzi, my apartment is called “Stalin’s Terrace” (to customers it is just “54”). Giovanni’s nickname is Stalin and the apartment has a terrace.
Anyway, back to my point. Or did I actually have a point?
That is scary!
Continuing.
Lorenza had exclaimed the other day how neat and tidy I was when she came to do her duties. As a result, I wanted to leave the place in especially good order. They were both very nice. One evening Giovanni even brought her over so he could impress me with her command of English. And she does like to practice. She sparkles when she talks.
After stripping the bed and shoving the linens and the towels in a pillowcase, I wiped things down, packed and then proceeded to finish off leftovers in the refrigerator for breakfast. Cheese again for breakfast. This must stop!
Checkout went fine. I even got a receipt without asking. Next, I went to get a dose of my favorite gelato but was quite disappointed to find the shop closed. There was something leaning against the door to keep people out. They are usually open at this hour. To waste time in the hopes the gelateria might open shortly, I went to get snacks for the remainder of the day. A pescatore, a square of pizza and some fruit. The owners of the store that I frequented are very strict. If you manage to touch a piece of fruit, before they yell to stop you, they insist that you buy it. “Touching bruises” they say in perfect English. Somewhat stricter than a “no squeeze” policy.
Still the doors are closed at the gelateria. Obsessed I’m not. I made my way to the train station without a fix of chocolate pepperoncini. I had decided that if the day was nice (and it was very much so) I was going back to the beach. However, this time, I was not going to take the long way. I was not doing battle with the brambles again. I would do the secret passage. OK, the well-known, secret passage.
I hopped the train to Corniglia. When I got there I didn’t take the endless stairs to the town but I diverted, as instructed, down to the abandoned train tunnel. “Guvano Beach” was scrawled, in blue paint, on the cement retaining wall with an arrow....so far so good.
A couple of turns later I saw the abandoned opening to the old train tunnel. Instructions were painted in drippy dried blood colored paint. The fee was paint-brushed at “5. EURO” and additional instructions informed, “PUSH” or “SUONARE” (which Babel Fish translates as “play”) with an arrow pointed at an intercom. I still can’t figure out what “DRUKEN” means. It is not German or Dutch.
I pushed the button and waited. Nothing happened. I pushed again and shortly afterward the rusty hinged wood-clad door-of-bars creaked open. Before me was ever-increasing darkness. A few feeble lights trailed off in the distance indicating a curve to the tunnel. I was told that the tunnel was about a mile long and should take twenty-minutes to navigate. This was nutrient rich soil for an active imagination. I proceeded focusing on the tiny dots of light in the distance.
The air grew cooler the farther I walked. The air and the smell grew heavy with dampness. The lights in the distance were of little help, as my eyes were still adjusting from the glare of sunlight outside. This ominous entrance all added to the cache of doing something that one shouldn’t. Still not adjusted to the darkness, I stumbled a bit as the initially paved cavern floor gave way to a very uneven deeply scared dirt floor.
There was emptiness to the lack of sound. Then all of a sudden there was a rumbling and you could feel the sound of the train in the new tunnel nearby. It trailed off and again I was very much alone in the cold still darkness.
As I proceeded, my eyes gained their footing and my step gained confidence. In the near distance I could now see a fluorescent light fixture high up on the vaulted ceiling. As I approached the light, I also began to hear heavy steady dripping in the distance. Don't you always hear heavy dripping in B rated horror films? Details began to emerge. Stonewalls and a brick vaulted ceiling. Abandoned equipment fed the relentless hunger of damp provoked rust and long-dead rotting electric cabling lie half-buried in the damp enveloping soil.
Soon the rumbling began again. But this time it grew much louder. It roared. I could feel the air being pulled out from around me. I looked up and the ceiling was now much higher. Massive old electrical connections were strung above. The sound got louder and the cold unfeeling darkness made me feel like the train was going to hit me. The sound was deafening. Just as I feared the train was going to run me down in the darkness I saw light behind what appeared to be a wall of newer masonry and realized that the new tunnel and the old one were conjoined at this point. The train whooshed by at a deafening pitch just a couple of feet to my right.
That got my adrenalin pumping.
As I drew closer to the light I noticed the glistening dampness of the walls. Soon I saw massive calcium encrustations that had been slowly crawling, for decades, down the walls of the tunnel. Then I was at the light. I noticed that even here life could find its way. Small delicate ferns gathered around the light fixture drinking in the light and the damp. The discovery brought balance to the dark lifeless cold-silence of the tunnel. I proceeded. After I had been walking for about twenty minutes I could see more than just the dots of fluorescent lights in the distance darkness. The whole tunnel was beginning to lighten and also beginning to dry out. Soon I could see the door at the end of the tunnel.
End of the scary story. Ok, it wasn’t that scary but it was rather exciting. Isn’t it amazing what someone will do to take off his or her clothes? At least this time I didn’t have to battle the blackberry brambles as I did coming down the “free” mountain access.
There was a wizened old man at the end of the trip. I carry my money in my passport, so I pulled it out to get a five-euro note. He said, “That’s not an American passport” as though he was the Carabinneri at a border crossing not a nudist fee-collector. “Si, United States” I said. He proceeded to tell me that the passport should be red. I said “No” thanked him and proceeded. I did notice a pair of binoculars on the aluminum lawn chair next to the edge of the cliff over the beach. I bet the women also noticed the binoculars. The other day I didn’t understand why all the women would lie crowded only at the base of the cliff. But then I realized. If they were that close to the base he couldn’t look down without fear of falling or being caught. Cleaver girls.
The trek down the stairs from this smaller precipice was quick and there were still lots of comfortable spots left on the black sand. My stay was to be longer this time because I had sunscreen. I ate my lunch and walked the beach. As I walked in the more gravely areas the movement of the large pebbles rubbing together en masse as the water backwashed over them made such a wonderful clicking sound. I just sat on a large rock listening and watching as the ocean rolled over the pebbly part of the beach and crashed onto the rocks at either end of this secluded spot.
I reluctantly left the shore at 3:00 pm and was home before 7:00 pm. The trip back to Firenze offered interesting and varied visuals and the “ordinario” trip was uncrowded and pleasant. But my mind was still hiking the trails of the Cinque Terre, melting into the black sands of Guvano and watching the sunsets on Stalin’s Terrace in Vernazza.
Your pictures are evident. But remember the light you see came from a flash and in addition to that I used the computer to lighten the pictures even more. IT WAS REALLY DARK DOWN THERE.
