Italy's Greatest Hit

On our first evening in Monterosso al Mare -- the largest and northwestern-most of the five villages, and our base for the trip -- we ate a thoroughly local meal at Ciak La Lampara, a neighborhood trattoria. It began with the blackened (squid ink) risotto, moved to local grilled fish and ended with cantucci biscuits and glasses of Sciachetra, Cinque Terre's naturally sweet white raisin wine.

The trattoria lacked one element: Italians. In the dining room, there were 20 place settings occupied by 17 fellow Americans, two Brits and a Canadian. It was a pattern we couldn't seem to shake. Another night, in another trattoria, we were seated next to a large group of U.S. students debating the merits of American hamburger chains.

And this was the off season!

One evening -- as a group of some 20 Japanese tourists were capturing the sunset with Nikons and tripods -- I ducked into a shoebox-size chapel near the Monterosso port. Here, by the light of scores of flickering altar candles, I found some solace -- one small piece of this coast that resisted change. A dozen elderly local women, heads covered, recited over and over their Ave Marias.

Walking the Walk

"The Italian people don't like to hike too much," Giovanni Grasso says in English, explaining why parts of the Cinque Terre have become more popular with stranieri (foreigners) than Italians.

Grasso, a thirtyish soccer-playing Monterosso native, and his ex-wife run Il Maestrale, the six-room inn where we spent our stay.

Italians do like to stroll, though, and Grasso complained that during July and August, Monterosso is overflowing with his countrymen, who pack the beachfront, the boardwalk and the cafes. Grasso said that he himself hiked the length of the Cinque Terre for the first time last year.

Gung-ho tourists, we did the jaunt after our first breakfast in town.

The coastal walk along the Cinque Terre -- the 7.5-mile Sentiero Azzurro, or "Blue Trail" -- connects all five villages by paths that cut through the national park. It takes 4 1/2 hours at a good pace, which doesn't account for time spent in the villages.

Our plan was to set out from Monterosso and return from the last of the five villages, Riomaggiore, by the coastal train late that afternoon. The advantage of walking in this southeasterly direction is that the walking gets progressively easier and the distances between the villages shorter.

The first leg of the walk -- Monterosso to Vernazza -- is the longest (about two hours) and most difficult, but one of the most rewarding.

We climbed through vineyards defiantly perched along slopes, through densely packed forests and across streams on stepped paths that were as narrow as a foot wide. Ascending the terraces alongside the trail are mechanized single rails for moving small train cars of workers, equipment and grapes up and down the steep hillsides during harvest.

Wine from this area has been produced in small but prized quantities for centuries, but since World War II most of the terraces have been abandoned. In an effort to preserve the terraces -- and thereby prevent the landscape from sliding into the sea -- the Italian government offers free 20-year cultivation rights to outsiders willing to tend the stone walls and grapes. So far there have been about 1,500 takers -- mostly foreigners -- for what Italian conservationists have called "heroic" vine growing.

It doesn't take much hiking up the steps of these terraces to figure out why the locals quit. For most of the morning we slogged steadily behind a tourist group led by a woman of some 70-plus years shouting out marching orders in German (which seemed to be the dominant language on the trail). They looked as if they were outfitted in the Black Forest, with metal walking sticks and mountain boots. We encountered loads of other foreigners, including young fresh-faced Californians, a French family and more well-equipped Germans.