To keep you utterly enthralled and so you don't loose interest this will have to be a two part, to be continued story. As the weekend i just had was out of this world...actually just out of the country in Switzerland.
Now the beginning of this story(non-fiction) sounds like an excert from a smutty mills&boon novel but i assure you that this story is as clean as the fresh mountain air...and i should know!
PART ONE :
Its four o'clock in the morning on an already hot Italian day. I'm in the car park with five( yes five) strapping Italian men (yes one of them is my darling Luca). Here's where i ask you to get your mind out of the gutter. This is not the end of a crazy, wild night....its only the beginning of my day.
Somehow Luca has successfully managed to get me out of bed at four a.m. BRAVO! Luca and his mates have organised a `hiking´ weekend in Switzerland( i will explain the inverted comas around hiking later in the story).
No coffee or breakfast, I'm dazed and confused. A one hour car ride to a bus station. Here i have my coffee and croissant...but what i wouldn't give for a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, mushrooms, beans and cute little fat juicy chipolatas. How is any one supposed to start the day in a good mood with a dry piece of pastry. Italy if your listening please for my sake introduce a good old fashioned `big breakkie´ into your breakfast culture.
On the bus we start winding through small Italian towns and up the hillside. Dotted along the roadside are beautifully painted shrines of Mary and even though I'm not a religious person i crossed myself every time we passed one. We zoomed and zig-zagged up the hillside with only what looked like a toy fence stopping us from plunging over the edge. A couple of times i thought i had bought a bus ticket to my own funeral.
DETOUR...Question & Answer time
QUESTION: How do you fart on a bus that has no windows without anyone noticing?
ANSWER: YOU CANT!....
especially when you know its going to be a `rip-snorta´, a `craka´... a small atomic explosion
So i sit there on the bus in between faces of `oh my god im going to die´and `oh my god i dont think i can hold this thing in´ ......hoping that the other people on the bus just think I'm a person with motion sickness and not a `special´ person.
The bus arrives at a cute little Italian town called Macugnaga. High up at the base of elegant, grand and graceful Swiss alps. With back packs on and hiking boots, not just any hiking boots these are some serious boots. There the type of boots that make the boys look all sexy and tough but makes even the most feminine girl look like a dike. So i plod along behind the boys where we make route for a sky rail....FUN. You see i still have no idea really what the real plan is for the day. I assume (never assume) that we are catching the sky rail to take a couple of pictures from a good view point on the mountain. Not one but two scary sky rails later we are at the summit of a three thousand meter(3,000mtr) snow capped mountain named Monte Rosa.
To try and explain the vista(that one was for you dad) would not do it justice but I'm going to try. I'm standing on this perfect almost iridescent white snow, the sky is brilliant blue and all around me are tall, jutting yet elegant white peaks( like on the evian bottles ). The air is fresh but sparse and it is hard to breath(thinking should not have had those cigarettes last night). At the summit of the mountain is a glorious ten meter gold statue of Mary looking ever so peaceful and watchful. The entire site brings tears to my eyes...or maybe i just got why were at the summit.
It is here that the leisurely day of `hiking´ through the valley of a small green mountain that i invisioned turned into extreme mountain climbing. As i looked back to the sky rail thinking that's how we would get back down to then commence our walk....the boys started the other way with maps and binoculars in hand. It was then that i realised with fret and excitement but mainly fret(because i was wearing my favorite going out jeans) that i had to climb down the face of this sheer, snow capped mountain....ALL THREE THOUSAND METERS OF IT!
....to be continued
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