If you read my first post, you might remember that Torri Superiore (TS) was one of my favorite destinations on the trip. Often times when I tell people about it I am asked how or why I decided to go there for two days, so I present that information here (feel free to skip ahead if you don't care).The Prologue
Although I did minimal research for my trip before I left, I did spend some time looking for some areas where I could "get away" so to speak from the city/touristy travel. I had a couple of recommendations for Cinque Terre (my next destination), but I was struggling to come up with other concrete locations. Having just finished the book Deep Economy, my search quickly took a turn towards environmentally conscious or ecologically sustainable communities. I had also recently discovered the concept of Earthships so I ended up down that path. I was unable to find any Earthships near train lines, but I did stumble across the term "ecovillage" which led me down a promising tree of links.
Searching for ecovillages in Europe proved to be a more difficult task than I had first assumed, even with a website such as the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), mostly because the individual websites (if they existed) were rarely in English. I don't remember if I found Torri Superiore through GEN or if I just got lucky, but it was a gem of a find. Their website is not only in English but it is also well put together. The main reason for this I found out later is that Torri Superiore differs from most ecovillages in that it places an emphasis on something called ecotourism. In fact most of the income for the village comes from the guest house.
I contacted the village while I was in Paris and reserved a room for two nights. The rooms were €39/night which included dinner and breakfast.
The Story
On my way to TS I stopped off very briefly in Monaco and got lost before finally finding my way from the bus stop to the train station. I grabbed a train from there to Ventimiglia, which was just up the coast. In Ventimiglia I was to catch a bus the 10km up to TS. Nobody at the train station spoke English very well so it took me a while to find the bus stop. I waited there a while, gelato in hand, for about 45 minutes while I watched different numbered busses drive by. Eventually I stopped one and asked about the "number 6" bus. I was told that that #6 wasn't running that particular day because it was a national holiday. At that point I walked back to the train station to grab a cab for what was about to be the most frightening car ride of my life.
If you've ever been to Italy then you probably understand the reputation that Italian drivers have. They play by different rules. My particular driver basically flew down the highway weaving in and out of traffic at his leisure. When we got closer to the village of Torri the road became winding and too narrow for more than 1 car to drive down. In Italy when this happens you don't slow down. Instead you just honk the horn a few times before flying around corners so that people know to get out of the way. I eventually made it to the middle of Torri safely and my heartbeat slowed some.
TS is actually located slightly north and up the hill from the village of Torri. Torri itself is located at the foothills of the Ligurian Alps in a valley with the Bevera River running through it. It has a population of maybe 150 and you can cross the village on foot in less than 10 minutes. TS is a short walk up the hill in a 700 year old building that the small community has spent the last 20 years renovating, while still preserving the old architecture and walls. The building is built into a fairly steep hillside with a few solar panels located up the hill above it to provide electricity. There are around 20 or so permanent residents of the ecovillage, and any number of visitors depending on the space available and the season. There are a few guest rooms available for rent as well as a small campground nearby for tents and campers. I could spend all day describing the ecovillage, but in the interest of space I will let you read the rest on the website.
I arrived at about 15:30 or so to find some people walking around sleepy-eyed. The previous three days had been spent in celebration with over 150 guests coming together to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the cultural association that founded TS. I gathered that very little sleep had been had in those three days.
I met the two people who were "in charge" of the administrative/tourism activities for the village. Lucilla was the lady I had been in e-mail contact with. She showed me around the place briefly before showing me to my room. It has a large, well laid out kitchen, a couple of dining rooms lined with environmentalism books and magazines, a nice patio overlooking the village and the valley, and a variety of homes for the permanent residents along with the guest rooms mentioned earlier.
My room was refreshingly simple, with two single plain beds, two small tables, and two small windows which I quickly threw open letting in the gorgeous northern Italian weather. The bathrooms/showers were just a few steps away in another room. The door had a lock on it but I never felt the need to really use it.
I took a brief nap but was once again afraid to oversleep, partly because I had forgotten to ask when dinner was. Afterward I got up and wandered around the village for a while. I was pretty much given free run of the place so I explored as much as I could without invading on anybody's privacy. It only took 10-15 minutes to really see most of it. I ended my exploration up on the balcony where I met an interesting German man named Dominik. Dominik told me about the "trust fridge" where the beer was kept and could be obtained by leaving a euro in the coin box on top. Dominik speaks at least 4 languages including German, Italian, and English and works most of the time as a freelance translator which he is able to do while traveling. When work is slow he also spends time teaching windsurfing, something he has done in a variety of locales including Egypt and the U.S. Basically he is one of the coolest people ever.
View from the balcony (courtesy of sethfrantzman)After a while I went out and walked around the road that leads up the mountain a ways. I didn't head far since I wanted to be close for dinner, but I got to watch the sun start to slowly set over the small valley as I watched an older man tend a small garden. The man worked with more patience, care, and concentration than anybody I have seen in a garden.
At 20:00 sharp a bell rang which signaled the beginning of dinner. I can't even begin to describe how amazing the food was here. Especially after a week of eating mostly street-stand food, the home-cooked, from scratch with fresh ingredients meals that were served at TS were insanely delicious. The first night I don't specifically remember what we ate, but I believe it was some kind of pasta, risotto, etc along with traditional Italian salad and red wine. Everyone at the village spends time helping out in some way with the cooking, but there are 4 main "chefs" that take turns orchestrating the meals.
Everyone eats together, and since it was beautiful out we spent both evenings eating on the balcony. Almost everybody was speaking Italian at the dinner which was slightly awkward for me but also sort of fun. Lucilla explained that when Italians eat they almost always talk about food, not politics or gossip or anything else. Dinner is not just a time to re-nourish your body; it is the most important social activity of the day. The people there are a very close-knit, friendly community and I felt very welcome.
After dinner some people began to slowly disperse while others stuck around for a while and chatted/drank. I was introduced to two Canadians that had just arrived in the village, a mother and son. The mother had actually been born in Italy and the son spoke some Italian as well. They were both very energetic people and fun to talk to. I also met an Italian guy with a fedora and a backpack who apparently was going to cross the mountain the next day to visit his cousin who trains monkeys to play with mentally handicapped children... at least that's what I gathered, he didn't speak the best English. He was a wanderer through and through.
As the night wore on and conversation began to die, I went inside and received permission from one of the residents to play a classical guitar I had been eying since I got there. I spent the next hour or so unwinding outside with the guitar, working travel stress down my fingers, through the instrument, and out into the night sky. I think it was 23:30 or so when I went to bed.
I woke the next morning at around 8:30 after a great night's sleep. I took my time showering and then headed down to the one small grocery store in Torri to grab some supplies for a hike I was planning later that day. I made it back to TS just in time to grab breakfast before it closed at 10:00. After that I met Lucilla in her office to take care of the financial aspects of my visit.
At 10:20 I met two other guests, Alberto and Maria, for a short hike down to the river. Alberto and Maria were both graduate students in Amsterdam and London, respectively, who were individually working on research related to TS. Maria had just arrived shortly before I did but Alberto had been there for over a month already. He led the way down a small trail past a natural spring that flowed some distance to irrigate the agricultural project for TS on the other side of the river.
The agricultural project was a fairly recent development mostly run by an Australian man who had moved to the area a little over a year ago. He was the only one in the village with much experience running sustainable farms so he was put in charge of the project. The gardens were terraced into the steep hillside and the man himself lived near the top of the hill with a volunteer who was staying for the summer. Water flowed from the spring down one side of the hill into some sort of gravity pump that would push it up the other side, higher in elevation than the source of the spring. I did not quite understand the logistics of how the pump worked, but it seemed fairly ingenious.
Alberto led us off the trail a bit over an outcropping of rocks to a shallow little pool at a bend in the river. The water was so clear you could see the bottom, but it was also cold so I did not jump all the way in. Alberto mentioned that if you swim around the corner there is a small waterfall that you can sit underneath. I regret not checking that out for myself. We stayed down by the river for an hour before heading back so Alberto and Maria could catch lunch. On the way back we quenched our thirst with delicious water bubbling out of the ground at the source of the spring.
I decided not to stay for lunch (an extra €10) and instead head up the mountain for an exploratory hike. Along the way I ate a cantaloupe and a banana that I had purchased earlier. I hiked for 2 hours or so and saw some gorgeous views of the valley. This was the first time on the trip I missed my camera.
The rest of the afternoon after I returned I just chilled out and caught up on some writing. Dinner that night consisted of stuffed red peppers and a few other things I can't remember. After dinner I talked some more with the Canadians and played the guitar some more as well. Before heading to bed Maria conducted a short interview with me for part of her research.
The next morning I grabbed breakfast and was headed to the bus when I was picked up by a nice old lady who gave me a ride into Ventimiglia. She was almost as crazy a driver as the cab driver was, but was somehow able to converse with me while racing into town.
Torri Superiore was incredible and I am very tempted to try living some place like that for a time in the future. The scenery, the people, the architecture, and the food were all amazing. There was luxury in its simplicity and the village was very peacefully free from distraction. Writing about it has filled me once again with a sense of longing.
Alternatively, I think it would be fun to travel around Europe or somewhere else, volunteering on farms for a week or two at a time before moving on to the next one. This is apparently a very feasible way to travel with a little research up front to find places.
Image courtesy of ReverendMungo
No comments:
Post a Comment