Drive of a Thousand Waterfalls

Yesterday morning we got up early (again) and were on the road at 7:45 AM. This was important because it was a long driving day. First we made our way through northern Italy ending up at Como, a picturesque city in the foothills of the Italian Alps. It also happened to be the home of our bus driver Massimo. Situated on the shores of Lake Como it is a favourite resort spot for many people, and celebrities like George Clooney have a house there. For history buffs (this is for you Thomas) it is the place where Mussolini was assassinated (while trying to escape to Switzerland which the city borders) at the end of World War II.

For us it was an adventure taking back roads as Massimo found a way around a traffic jam (at the border crossing). It is amazing how he can manoeuvre that big bus around such narrow streets. Then through the border without being checked, something that is not required since the formation of the E.U. Now we were in Switzerland.

The Swiss have four official languages and the first stop we had was in the resort town of Lugano. The prominent language spoken here was Italian, and the favourite food was Italian, so in many ways it felt like we were still in Italy. It had begun to rain, so our stop here was primarily for a lunch and washroom break, with little time for sightseeing (even though it was a beautiful setting). We found a restaurant busy with people and as we were deciding about whether or not we wanted to eat there or elsewhere a friendly and efficient waiter cleared a table for us and offered us a seat. So we sat, and ordered pizza, a four cheese pizza which was very different from pizzas back home, both in shape, type of crust and flavour. We even poured a little spiced olive oil on the pizza (something the Italians do regularly) and it was all good.

At one point the storm moving in created some strong gusty winds and suddenly the awning on the restaurant (which was covering 20 to 30 people) started lifting, blowing around and dumping water on the folks beneath it. Lots of yelling ensued and all the waiters ran over to grab the awning to weigh it down. Within 5 minutes the wind subsided and all went back to normal - a little excitement and entertainment during lunch!

Back on the highway and the rain really started coming down - but there was a side benefit for this… the rain, combined with the melting snow on the mountain tops created many, many waterfalls. One waterfall was shooting out water vertically, and our tour guide Elzo said he had never seen that waterfall look like that before. There were little waterfalls, and large waterfalls everywhere you looked for at least an hour along this stretch of the highway leading to Lucerne. The waterfalls were simply breathtaking. We tried taking pictures through the bus window, but they were blurry and disappointing. I wanted the bus to stop so we could walk right up to one of these intricate or powerful displays of living water, but of course that was impossible. So we simply had to enjoy this display of nature’s grandeur from the confines of the bus. It made the trip, on a grey unpleasant day, a wonder-full time.

I’m not sure why, exactly, but I felt more inspired with these thousand waterfalls than all the splendid buildings we’ve seen so far. Perhaps it was partly the result of being up in the mountains, which always touches my spirit. It is easy for me to understand why centres of reflective spirituality, particularly monasteries, were often established in the mountains. We have driven by some already on this leg of the journey, but more about that in another post.