Postcard from Puglia - postmarked 03 October 2018

Although I had been daydreaming about, and subsequently planning a group cycling tour of Puglia -- this is the southeast region of Italy, or "the heel of the boot" -- for almost six months, I am hesitant to admit that what has had me amped up was the high-altitude high-speed zipline experience that I had also booked for the very first day after the week of cycling.
And it was a bit fortuitous that it would be realizable at all as the zipline is only operational on weekends after mid-September. Our cycling week ended on Saturday with a celebratory dinner that same evening in the historic old town of Polignano a Mare, a fascinating port city on the Adriatic coast. Every old town shares many similar, arguably romantic attributes: very narrow, often twisting streets, not paved but assembled from stone, even sometimes from marble in fact, laid centuries ago when not yet invented cars could not exert any design influence on their layout; ancient stone buildings now housing resplendent restaurants, cafés and boutiques; and of course a church or two, often magnificent in stature replete with the most detailed artwork adorning their vaulted ceilings and brilliant stained glass windows punctuating their walls, but as well other churches rather understated lacking any splendor at all, out of favour perhaps. When a town is considered historic in Italy you can be sure that most of its buildings were constructed four or five hundred years ago, and the remainder even older and still standing, too, in contrast to our much newer buildings and roads at home in continual need of repair or replacement. I find it frankly amazing that we often enjoyed our dinners in restaurants that were built even before the concept of a restaurant came into being, where the original centuries old wooden beams still hold up the ceiling; where the electric wiring had to be added to the structure only after electricity had been invented and become available so the hall could be illuminated for us all to see our tasty pizzas, risottos, pastas and our friends' smiling faces, too; where the plumbing needed in a modern kitchen (and lavatory) had also to be added decades ago once this became common practice, too

As we were cycling outside of the summer high-season, we always had good luck in being seated all ten of us at one table, hastily arranged from smaller tables by the waitstaff eager for the business. Somewhat bittersweet our last dinner was as we all knew well that Sunday would not be another glorious day of cycling, no longer were random surprises awaiting us as we rode our daily 90 km track along the coast, at least once a day through a zombie village where I imagine several thousand summer residents had completely filled the town but a month earlier, crowded the beaches with reverie, swelled the cafés and bars their coffees and beers noisily consumed, emptied the stores of beach paraphernalia, sunscreen and bathing attire, only to be totally deserted by early September, leaving ghost cars and bicycles behind, silent and motionless; windrifts of sand blown in from the beach accumulating at random corners and on streets (risky business for a cyclist!) possibly to be swept away by next summer's returning residents. My first zombie village experience made me imagine the aftermath of a neutron bomb, where supposedly all life is obliterated yet no harm befalls the homes and other structures. At first I decided that it must be siesta time, that period from 2pm to 6pm when even today, in the high-tech 21st century that we all inhabit, all commerce ceases so that workers could return home for a home-cooked pasta meal and a nap. But no, a siesta it is not. The houses are closed up tight, their windows shuttered and the town's population drops to zero! I half-expected to see tumbleweeds blowing through the deserted streets. I suppose tumbleweeds don't blow outside of Arizona very often. Or is it New Mexico?

Other villages, the larger ones, remain alive and vibrant all year long as one might expect. Of course it was in these towns that we spent our evenings. The one town I must reveal to you as being perhaps the most amazing is Matera, km 0 for us out of 525 km ultimately cycled over six days. I fear that I will spoil the surprise that awaited me by sharing this, however for you who will likely never visit, read on: the Old Town of Matera, much like all the others, is accessed by passing through ancient gates, under giant stone archways, leaving behind modern buildings and paved streets for the charm of all that is antique. But there's more: the center of Old Town Matera appears to be dug out of the surrounding city, a hole about 400 metres in diameter. It is nestled deep within and down below. Steep stone staircases cut into the walls of this depression allow us to descend to its very centre. I have never seen a city with a hole in its center, and in this hole another city is built, with homes clinging to the steep walls leading down surrounding the tumultuous cacophony of commerce and restaurants and cafés at the bottom. Close your eyes for even a moment and imagine old square stone houses with their ubiquitous orange-coloured clay roofs 360 degrees around the edge of a bowl 400 metres across, and down the sides of this bowl, more houses, all the way to the bottom. Add this town to your bucket list, it is unique for other reasons, too, for you to discover without my guidance.

The celebratory dinner behind me -- as tasty as any dinner in Italy -- my next challenge was to get my ass an hour north to Bari, Puglia's largest and only city where a car can be rented. Two cycling friends and I were finally, comfortably seated in a rented Panda en route to Castelmezzano, one of the ten most beautiful mountain villages in the world, it has been written. Google it and you will see that I kid you not. An hour of highway followed by ninety minutes of narrow, winding roads, a few wrong turns thrown in for good measure, slowly climbing mountainsides as we closed in on our mountaintop destination. Castelmezzano's buildings are built into the mountainside with barely room for anything motorized to get through beyond the village's entrance. So parking our car along its access road's shoulder is normal practice and dragging our luggage 500 metres uphill along pedestrian passageways to our B+B is also normal, drawing no stares from townsfolk. One really has to see this village to understand how it justly earned its reputation for amazement. The first view of it from a bend in the approaching road -- there is only one way in -- left me speechless. I admit that finding myself speechless is a rare treat, a feeling that I relish. The townspeople live in houses basically uphill and downhill from each other. A deep valley separates this village from its neighbour, Pietrapertosa, which is similarly built on top of its own mountain, two kms south. A few years ago somebody decided to build not one, but two ziplines connecting the two mountain villages. One zipline zips downhill in one direction from the top of one mountain, and the other returns the customer back to his or her starting point from the top of the other. Did I forget to mention that we zip along at over 100 km/hr? Yep, you read this correctly, over 100 km/hr on a zipline which is more than 1,500 feet above the valley floor below!! I knew these statistics when I reserved our 4:30pm time slot three months ago and it has been weighing on my mind until this Sunday when we ultimately arrive in Castelmezzano. Not as you might guess on my mind due to trepidation but to anticipation of the expected euphoria to come. I am certain that the 100 km/hr speed metric had not been what was exciting me all this time, but rather it was the altitude: zipping 1,500 feet above the trees below me, in effect flying like an eagle, being secured only by a cable above me and a couple of hooks. Unimaginable. A shuttle takes us up a narrow road, one switchback after another and deposits us at a footpath above the village. Anticipation grows further, as I have roped my two brave cycling friends into joining me, and we walk uphill another 25 minutes, chatting nervously about who will go first, who will go last and who will change his mind and bail, to arrive at the mountain's peak and the starting point. Like most thrills (and fears) in life, the very thought of what follows can be more terrifying than the event itself. Not so in this situation. The excitement continues to build for the experience to come. I slip into a harness and tighten it, don a helmet, and allow the attendant to clip me to the cable. I remain uncertain as to the utility of the helmet however it occurs to me only now that I could slam into a bird at full speed. I am asked to lie horizontally suspended and a second clip is attached to the cable, I grab the straps behind my back to secure my arms and next a little sail is fitted between my back and the roller above which will prevent me from gaining too much speed as it catches the wind and acts as a brake. After months of expectancy a catch is released and I accelerate horizontally into space somewhat downhill faster and faster, the wind rushing towards me, my eyes start to tear -- from joy or from the wind I do not know. I look left, right and down and I am in denial that this is real. To be frank with you, it is surreal. Picture me: I am flying! I am an eagle. A very fast eagle!

This I know: a huge thrill it was, it was over too quickly (about 75 seconds) and my Strava app logged me at 103 km/hr for nearly the whole time. Add Castelmezzano to your bucket list. You can thank me later.

Cycling/zipping Barry of Puglia

Postcard from Portugal - postmarked 25 June 2018

One morning last week I got out of bed and went for a walk on the beach. This, in the town of Porto Covo. It is a quaint, if not beautiful, village on the Atlantic Ocean, an hour's drive south of Lisbon. Like all towns sprinkled around southern Portugal's Atlantic coast, its houses are all whitewashed with either white paint or amazing, muted hues of turquoise, mustard, salmon and so on. I am reminded of a box of crayons that we had as kids. Can you think back to your own crayons and picture these houses? There's no mistaking that I am no longer in Canada (although I remember seeing photos of Newfoundland fishing villages similarly colourful).

If this weren't enough, the streets of the entire town -- and as I later learned, of all Portuguese cities -- are constructed of coarse chunks of black stone, each uniquely shaped, roughly cubic, the size of apples... they look to me like volcanic lava after having cooled down and solidified. Each of the thousands or perhaps millions of individual rocks must be placed one by one on a bed of sand with a space between on all sides. Then, later, sand is spread everywhere to fill in the spaces and voilà, no heavy, expensive equipment needed, just a lot of manual labour, and a road is born. I guess the system works in a country with high unemployment. The progress is slow but no potholes to be seen. On the other hand the sidewalks are made from glossy marble-like, white stones chips which are also placed manually in a random array. They appear to be cemented into place. In both cases, all the streets and sidewalks are uneven, easy to trip on, or stub a toe, even twist an ankle in a crack, with the one upside of them being beautiful, a highway of mosaic object d'art. Speaking of which, in a country with high umemployment, the artistic creativity of the Portuguese is heavily fueled by being unconstrained by gainful employment. As the streets are laid out in random fashion, not Cartesian at all as we are accustomed to in Canada, surely due to the roads having been created long before cars first appeared, many, if not most intersections are at odd angles, resulting in spits of land, too small for a house, but just so for either a beer stand, café, or a sculpture, sometimes life-size, other times humongous. I have come to believe that, either way, it is either an unlicensed commercial activity or an unsanctioned sculpture that simply one day appears. In one case we came upon a series of plush sofas on a wide sidewalk which looked soft and comfortable but were in fact crafted from stone. Comfortable to sit on but far from soft as they appeared to be.

At the risk of repeating myself, I am again surprised by the artistic creativity of the Portuguese. Aside from the interesting graffiti on display everywhere there is a fence or wall, in many cases entire houses have become the canvas for an artist to express him or herself. Almost always brilliant (I only once spied a large wall painted in black and white) with bright colours employed and remarkable definition rendered, I became nearly addicted to photographing the art from an interesting angle or with some contrasting distraction, people walking in front, or a street sign in the foreground providing a clue as to where in the world I was at the time.

As I was saying, I went for a walk on the beach one morning. Five days later I stopped walking and checked the app on my phone: 125 km clocked! Hard to believe isn't it? Harder still was carrying my 30-lb backpack the entire way. While it is true that a small part of the hike was indeed on the beach, the greater part is spent two or three hundred feet above the Atlantic ocean along the cliffs and dunes that parallel the shoreline all the way to Sagres, the town that is at the extreme southwest corner of Portugal, indeed of all of Europe! Each day is spent walking south, and my being overwhelmed by the neverending and spectacular views of the ocean and rocky shoreline ahead seen from high up. I have to tell you that there is very little in life more rewarding than getting out of bed in the morning, having a delicious calorie-dense breakfast and then going for a 25-km walk! Especially when the views are similar to the one you see on this postcard. There is a certain freedom to traveling from town to town without the silly requirement of using a car, or taking a train. A bonus: Ten or twenty secluded, pristine beaches are spotted below each day, one of which we choose to hike down to for a swim and a rest on a daily basis. These beaches are flanked by rocky barriers at either end making our approach down the cliffside somewhat challenging and ultimately the only way to access the sand and surf. Normally, we own the beach as they are all difficult to access, plus there are no roads cut through the brush and cactus to our clifftop hiking trail. 

Although the waters along the famous Algarve on Portugal's south coast are quite warm and enjoyable, here the sea is very cold, any swim is short, very short for me at least. Picture me running in before I could change my mind, and 30 seconds later running out before my lips turn blue and my fingers numb! Fortunately the sun then warms me up and dries both me and my hiking shorts soon enough. We walk for five to six hours a day, plus time for breaks, lunch, photos and a swim. And finally stroll into the next seaside town to discover its cafés, architecture and art. Each village has its character, but being beach towns they all share the convention of concentrating its commerce on one or two streets for the tourists to congregate and buy tchotchkas, sip on sangrias and ultimately spend the entire evening on a terrasse for dinner and drinks. The biggest stress of the day is choosing what to eat: grilled sardines, octopus or squid, or maybe a local delicacy of seafood catalana, basically a paëlla without the rice getting in the way. The entire month of June is sardines month in Portugal, don't ask why, and grilling them on a charcoal BBQ is ubiquitous. You may be surprised to learn that a great many of the restaurants do their grilling outside beside or behind the terrasse where we sit, even sometimes on a tiny hibachi. 

One of the pleasures of hiking the entire 125-km rota vincentina (the fisherman's walk) is that the seaside villages which dot the route only see Portuguese tourists (with a handful of Canadian exceptions). The foreigners flock to the Algarve where they take over those villages which have by now lost their original character. The Algarve experience really deserves its own postcard so stay tuned. In contrast, I imagine that these smaller villages that hosted us during the late afternoons and evenings along our hike have changed very little over the decades. Small restaurants and cafés adorn the main street and it seems that somebody's mama is cooking up a storm in each of their tiny kitchens. No need for five-star chefs here! Now, dining in a Portuguese restaurant back in Montreal will always bring me back to these enchanted evenings.

Here's hoping all your evenings are enchanted, too!

Barry from Portugal

Postcard from St-Moritz, Switzerland - postmarked 11 March 2018

There are precious few experiences more magical or more mystical, than starting my morning at the top of the world, above the scattered wispy clouds, the cold air tickling at my nostrils and the sun brilliant against the rich blue sky straining to warm my face, before skiing back down to reality, 2,000 metres below.
But, let's rewind the tape a bit as we must first get to the top of the world, which requires rides up a series of massive cable cars sprinkled with a dose of unabashed anticipation, if not outright excitement.
The cable cars connecting the ancient storied Swiss village of St-Moritz to its majestic Piz Nair, the highest peak far above, are huge, each holding 120 skiers and snowboarders. I have heard of even larger ones that have two floors, yes, a double-decker, but have yet to see this with my own eyes. These literally whisk us upwards at high speeds, paralleling the slopes below, where we can easily see the early morning skiers shushing down on piste beneath us. Even when speaking English everybody here says 'on piste' and 'off piste,' a touch of franglais (or is it frenglish?) that we are accustomed to at home.
I have come to St-Moritz for a week of off piste skiing. All that is required are the technical skills for skiing far from the tame, groomed trails in the deeper, fresh, untracked powder; an experienced guide to keep us from skiing straight off a hidden cliff or into a field of rocks; and finally an individual radio beacon strapped to my torso and a backpack containing a fold-up shovel and an extensible rod for prodding through the packed snow in the unlikely -- yet possible -- event of a life-and-death search to locate an unfortunate fellow skier buried below thanks to a freak avalanche occurring right here right now. Our leader, an affable, tall, heavily accented Swiss Italian named Giacomo, has been guiding for six seasons here and has yet to ever rush to the aid of anybody caught in avalanche. One of his skills is knowing the areas to avoid where an avalanche is likely to occur, due to its orientation to the sun, the quality and quantity of snow that has recently fallen, the pitch of the slope, the changing temperatures and other factors.
Reaching the summit by cable cars is insufficient. The off piste slopes easily accessible from the cable car's arrival point are quickly skied on leaving the snow 'used up' by early risers. No, we late risers who have slept in until 7:30am and finally arriving at the summit by 9:30am, have to traverse in one direction or another, remaining high up on top of huge bowls and couloirs of snow below. Often, for 15 or 20 minutes of traversing of perhaps a kilometer, or, even more taxing at this elevation: climbing higher still in boots, skis slung over one shoulder, breathless, arriving, at the very top of a steep pitch with an even steeper and narrow entry point to the mountain of fresh powdery snow awaiting us below.

Depending on one's character, I can see it clearly in the concerned faces of my fellow skiers, the adrenaline rush we all feel is either painfully scary, or simply delightfully exhilarating! No need to be deposited here by helicopter, the climb was exhausting and worth it, the view from the top of the world, is, well, otherworldly.
Strange how the snowy peaks directly across the other side of the valley beckon, it feels as if I can stretch out my arm and scoop a handful of snow in my glove even though I know that gloveful of snow is 10 kms away. And so the dream starts with blue within blue skies above, faraway rugged mountains at the horizon that I caress with my mind's fingertips, rarified cold air that will sadly not luxuriously fill my lungs as at sea level. Most important the first turn that I will soon take over the small cornice, a drop of less than ten feet, into a mountain of snow below. That first turn beckons the second, and the rhythm is then set, for better or for worse for the next minute. I know that I will be breathless by then and my legs will stop responding to the music playing in my brain, that helps me keep the beat. No, I never ski with earphones, but yes, I do hear the lyrics of my favourite tunes, keeping my skis on beat or getting them back on beat when I fumble and miss a turn. When the pitch is not terrifying, nothing can stop me, my skis react instantly to every contour below my feet, I feel like a God, something like that life-size Popeye stand-up inflatable doll I had when very young, no matter how I punished it, it always landed on its feet. In these conditions I manage to impress my ski colleagues. At the top, however, when the pitch feels nearly vertical, I do my very best to ski, pretending as though the powdery expanse is not steep, as though I am still a God, and I freely admit it is very challenging, however I also relish in telling you that it is always exhilarating to ski down from so high up, in an expansive bowl of powder untracked by others, with the belief that the perfect run is always inside me... waiting to get out!

But I know you want to hear about St-Moritz, enough about skiing and its accompanying exhilaration, what about the town of St-Moritz? Is it true that it is here that the most valuable real estate in all of Switzerland is located? Yes, this is correct. It may also be true that St-Moritz is the first ski village in the world, where apparently the sport first came into existence. However the village is centuries older, with its narrow cobblestone pedestrian streets winding their way up through the heart of the central shopping area. Dotted with wine bars and famous chocolateries, more obvious are the most expensive branded stores in the world lining the sidewalks: Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta, you get the idea. We know there is no upper limit to the price tags of jewellery and watches, however when I see $3,000 jerseys, $7,500 sweaters and $15,000 jackets, I understand. The bus driver that drove us back to Zurich at the end of my week told me that one day last year he was asked to go to the airport to collect the luggage for a client and transport them to the hotel. The client was the uncle of the king of Brunei and arrived, alone, in a 747, with 195 pieces of luggage in tow. Purchasing a $7,500 sweater for him is likely equivalent to my purchasing a $2 fridge magnet: neither of us is the poorer for the purchase. The few five-star hotels in and around St-Moritz have rooms that start at $2,000 per night. Breakfast not included. Royalty and the very wealthy have been coming to St-Moritz for centuries and thanks to them, the common folk (me?) can browse the most incredible fashion shops unparalleled anywhere else on the planet, try on an article of clothing that may be more expensive than a small car, and gaze at ourselves in the mirror. St-Moritz, like most Swiss villages, features a tall clock tower at the top of the town. No Swiss citizen can be excused for arriving late to an appointment as the clock towers are visible from all parts of town. On one weekend in January the world-famous horse races take place on the large frozen lake at the town's base, an event I am informed that must be added to my bucket list. Fortunately, I did witness (again) the Engadin ski marathon, a 42-km race that attracts over 40,000 Nordic skiers, which passes right through lower St-Moritz at kilometre 15. If you enjoy skate-skiing, it's a sight that will turn you green with jealousy for not having decided to participate. A ribbon of thousands of XC skiers, as far as you can see, dressed in all colours and patterns of skin-tight outfits, visible from far against the snowy white background, races by, the strain of their efforts clearly visible on each racer's face.

No strain on my face, for now my blissful week of action is behind me as I relax, finally, on my flight home.
Cheers!
Barry from Switzerland xx