Chippis > Simplon Pass 50km, Simplon Pass > Lago Mergozzo 73km, Lago Mergozzo > Como 65km

[Originally posted Aug 7, 2014]

(sorry, very long post - but lots Katy and I want to remember from the last couple days.  photos to come later)

Wow.  It’s 8:15am and we are in the camper van of Lino - my new favorite Italian.  His wife, Marina, is offering us another round of tea (it is a similar situation to our encounter with the Irish man back in Brittany, France where the husband demands we have tea with him and then demands his wife to make it - a nice setup if you ask me) after Katy turned down coffee (although we weren’t so lucky last night).  We are parked on the Simplon Pass near the border of Switzerland and Italy with views of the Eiger and the Jungfrau.  The last sixteen hours definitely go down in history as our official introduction to Italy.  But from the outset, it was not what I would have expected.  Let me start from the beginning I suppose.

We woke up in Chippis, Switzerland in the home of Marc and Tilly Caloz.  Tilly, a native of Holland, had left early to renew a passport in Bern.  That left us at home with Marc, a native of the Cantone of Valais, who only speaks French, and so we carefully navigated what has become familiar territory.  We were warned however, that about 10 or 20 km down the road we would reach what he called the “linguistic frontier” - the point at which German takes over and my French becomes useless.  And then another hour or so we would hit the town of Brig and head south over the Simplon Pass to Italy, entering another language I don’t know.  (Although my speculation of these two languages - which was later confirmed - was that German is simply a mixture of French/Spanish spoken with mild anger and too much saliva in the back of your throat and Italian is the same, only you pretend to have a chef hat on your head and you add an extra vowel sound to every word, usually an “o” but sometimes an “a”).

(As a side note: this entry is now being continued from our campsite at Lake Mergozzo, while Katy is having another cup of tea, this time with a German couple).

So two days ago, then, we left Chippis and rode east up the Rhone river until we reached the town of Brig.  The only sad part of this ride was when we reached the town of Visp and opted not to take the 70km detour to Zermatt.  It was an unfortunate decision, but I guess we have to save some things for the future.  At Brig our first real climb started.  The Simplon Pass is 20km and climbs at about 6.5% until you reach 2,000 meters - it’s a haul.  We got into our “granny gear” - which is cyclist lingo for the easiest gear you have (the one old women use) - and begun the slow climb up the pass.  It was spectacular.  The road was steep, the views breathtaking, the ringing bells of cattle on the mountainside were everywhere.  We went up up up and up.  First one switchback to climb high above the city of Brig, then swept around behind another mountain pass.  Then we entered the land of the tunnels.  One tunnel after another.  Not tunnels through the mountain, but tunnels that climbed through the side of the mountain because their wasn’t any room for the road.  And eventually, three hours later, we reached the top - king of the mountain.

And if that was the entire happenings of the day, it would go down in trip history as one of our great days.  But the day was only getting started.  At the pass we snapped a couple of photos and then pulled out some food and started eating (I would call it lunch but our meals seem to run on a different schedule as of late - basically when we aren’t riding we are eating).  Casual hellos with folks from the nearby camper vans began to gain traction until we were having a conversation with a couple from Belgium and a number of Italians.  After our quick snack we decided we’d spend the night on the pass - there were a number of nearby mountains that needed exploring - and multiple invitations for wine with the Italians after dinner seemed to be un-turn-down-able.  My shower that evening was the small lake on the pass.  I love lakes. We then returned to the parking lot with the camper vans for dinner.

The Belgium couple saw us trying to boil some water with our little camp stove, and (most likely taking pity on us - when people here we are from the States and traveling across Europe by bicycle the general reaction has always been - oh you poor thing, what can we do to help?) offered us the use of their stove in the van.  While Katy attended to boiling water I got out our dinner - some tortelinni that was purchased a couple days ago but not eaten at our hostel in Chamonix (Katy found a place that sold “Midnight Burgers”).  As soon as the tortelinni was on the table we had the undivided attention of the Italians (check out the name tag, you’re in my world now grandma).  Although I learned their names later, I was quickly surrounded by Lino, Roberto and Davida (you should ask Eli for the correct pronunciation of their names).  They spoke almost no English, but proceeded to tell me all things tortelinni - telling me the proper time to cook the noodles, the seasoning to add, the way to know when the noodles were done, what it is best eaten with and etc.  (This entire experience occurred sitting in the parking lot of a 2,000 meter pass on the border of Switzerland and Italy, and on the borrowed chairs and table of a closed down Hotel).  The biggest conversation stumbling block was when Roberto tried to explain the seasoning necessary for the boiling water.  After a number of hand motions, and we decided that salt was not the answer, Katy guessed the next thing you would add to boiling water would be a bouillon cube.  The word “bouillon” didn’t translate well to Italian so our guessing game continued.  Finally, I started making the “mooooo” noise of a cow to which the Italians started chanting in unison: bravo, bravo bravo (it seems there are a couple words that Italians always say in multiples, and bravo is one of them).  And these types of guessing games was how the next 14 hours of our conversations would go.  The following morning during breakfast honey was presented, but it didn’t look quite the honey, and so making the bzzzzz sound was quickly followed by, si si si.  The most boisterous conversation occurred when Lino, Roberto, Mauricio, Davida and I were looking at our map of Europe and discussing our route.  Lino insisted that we visite Firenze (or Florence) which he called the capital of Italy (which isn’t true).  At this suggestion a quick war of words and hand gestures broke out, each word and sentence always including an extra vowel syllable.

I guess I will just skip over the part where Katy and I were invited to the family gathering of wine drinking that Marina claims the wine was “burnt off”.

In the morning we were invited on the family hike and picnic.  The group included Mauricio and Juzy (sp.) and their two kids Sarah and Matteo, Roberto and Angela and their kids Frederico, Alessandra and Davida and the grandparents Lino and Marina.  It was a great 4 hour hike with views of the Jungfrau and Eiger and many mountains beyond.  It reminded me of the Haitian saying: beyond mountains there are mountains.  As we hiked I worked on my Italian.  I had cut out the 4 language pages from the back of Lonely Planet’s Italy book we got for free at a previous WS home.  I hikes alongside the children pointing at words, which they would correctly pronounce, then I would try the same to which they would say bravo, bravo or would quickly correct my accent.  It was like my own personal google translate.  After a while the parents starting joking about their time studying English when they were kids.  It seemed the one sentence they all remembered was “the cat is on the table” which they would pronounce it perfect British accents.  We all laughed and from then on, every time we hit a conversation problem we couldn’t quite figure out we would just say “the cat is on the table”.

After the hike we were requested to hang around for the 8pm spaghetti dinner.  We had to unfortunately decline and push on.  After saying our arrivederci’s we set off down the other side of the Simplon Pass.  The first sign we saw had a picture of a truck going downhill that said: 19km, 10% (and the wheels of the truck were on fire).  That’s a little scary.  I stopped the bike.  Checked the brakes.  Tightened the brakes and we set off.  It was a windy, steep 70km/hr descent that I can’t believe Katy didn’t yell at me in anger for going too fast.  Every time we reached a steep section I would sit up straight and use my rain jacket as a giant wind trap to try and slow us down.  At times I thought I would be blown backwards off the bike (this tactic was used instead of “riding the brakes” because I didn’t want them to overheat - I’ve heard horror stories of brakes overheating and then disaster following.)  We finally reached the Italian border and stopped for a moment.  I squirted a little water on the brakes and they instantly started sizzling.  Yikes.

Then a quick descent to Lake Merogozzo, with only a quick stop for two dinners sandwiched with dessert—three pizzas (margherita, salame and vegetariana), a caprese salad and of course gelati.  Mmm.  So excited to be in Italy.  Great food.  Sunshine.  Tomorrow we will be back at Lago di Como to reminisce about a family trip of yester-year.