Camogli is the kind of town you never want to leave.It faces west, directly into the setting sun, so that the ochre, burnt umber and bright yellow houses that line the racefully curving bay glow in the last magic hour before dusk. In the morning the sun sneaks over the hills behind town, touching first the grey battlements of an ancient fort that climbs out of the sea. Then the church bell tower catches the light and casts it back on the waves.
That's when you have to go out for a stroll, before umbrellas are opened on the beach; while an old man tosses scraps to wary Italian cats; while shutters are shuttered on flat facades skillfully painted to trick the eye into thinking they are really made of stone. Every step is a picture, every picture a prize winner, if only in the album back home.
"We came all the way from home to a place that looks just like home!"
Dick's joking of course. Even Santa Barbara looks nothing like this town on the Italian coast just a few miles from Genoa. We are sitting on the terrace of the Hotel Cenobio dei Dogi, perched on a ledge of rock commanding a view of the entire sweeping panorama. There are six of us come to walk the paths of the Portofino peninsula, led by two lovers of Italy.
"I was in banking in Frankfurt," says Dave Johnson. "My partner and I discovered the Italian alps and then Italy itself. 12 years ago we purchased a home north of Lake Como with no electricity or running water and renovated it. Then we formed Tre Laghi Travel. The challenge was to find clients who not only wanted their creature comforts, but liked hiking too."
Whether we are such creatures we're about to find out. We leave the comforts of Camogli on a path built for donkeys in a vaguely distant past. "When you ask local people how long the trails have been here, they just say, 'forever,'" says Dave. Thousands upon thousands
of beautifully laid stones, no longer flat and smooth, weave through willowy trees clad in ivy. Soon we are deep in the protected forest of Monte di Portofino, destined for one of the most glamorous resorts in the world.
"My friends can't understand how I can come to Italy for the first time and not see Rome, Florence and Venice," says Carolyn. "But I'd rather see a little well than a lot badly."
Carolyn and her husband, Chris, have traveled from Maryland for a walking tour of the Portofino peninsula as opposed to the more typical excursion by car. What they seem to know instinctively about driving in Italy, I've experienced first hand.
To get to Camogli I drove through Recco, or tried to. As soon as I pulled off the highway, I knew something was up. Police were rerouting bumper to bumper traffic. Pedestrians strolled obliviously between the slowly moving cars. As I inched toward the sea there was a
tremendous explosion. It couldn't be fireworks, I thought, not in the middle of the day. In Italy, it could.
Parking almost on the toes of a woman holding a baby who stared through me as if I weren't there, I joined a throng of people gawking at the beach. Above it puffs of smoke appeared where flashes of light and more explosions had just been. Occasionally a faint spray of color flickered in the sky, just enough to indicate that this was a major display.
Finally, a huge finale rocked the town and a cloud of smoke rolled over the crowd. I never discovered the reason for the show. Maybe they wanted to demonstrate just how little can be seen when you set off thousands of dollars worth of fireworks on a bright sunny day.
Whatever the reason, it is with great relief that I turn in my rental car and put on my hiking shoes. After gently climbing for an hour or so, the path turns downward and the vegetation slowly changes. Now there are silver-leaved olive trees and small farms with vegeta bles begging to be picked. Suddenly an obstacle stops us in our tracks. Directly ahead on the narrow trail a tiny black kitten wobbles unsteadily.
"Two weeks," says a sturdy woman who emerges from an old stone farmhouse to snatch it out of our way and answer the question, "How old?" "And she's always walking into the road!" she declares, striding under a porch cascading with flowers.
Around a bend we come upon a chapel, plain and simple except for a coat of raspberry paint. Then the coastline heaves into view and on it, two magnificent villas. Donna from New York thinks she knows which one she wants. But then she isn't sure so she decides to take both.
When dirt turns to pavement, we know we're almost there. We see sprawled against the hill the Splendido. What makes it so? Is it Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor? They all stayed in this most luxurious of luxury hotels. We switchback downrds, catching glimpses of a tiny bay and hints of shiny white hulls. One more turn and we're at eye level with the top of a belfry. Then we plunge into the first narrow winding street walled with pastel-hued houses funnelling us into the heart of Portofino.
I've done my homework so I know that The Church of Saint George - not the one we've passed - is on the site of a sanctuary to Mithros, a Persian god favored by Roman soldiers. In 1190 Richard Lionheart sailed from this harbor on his way to the third crusade. In 1930 Guglielmo Marconi, from his yacht in the (almost) same spot, threw a
switch that lit up the world's fair in Sydney, Australia. And nobody gave a damn until Hollywood came to town.
There's a story that when Elizabeth, here with Richard, went shopping in the streets of Portofino, local women tried to sell her their babies. Certainly it's true that in the 60's the rich and that other thing claimed this miniature jewel as their own, for about as long as it took the paparazzi to discover their discovery. Then the hordes poured in and the celebs took to the hills where they are to this day when they're not hiding out on their yachts.
Which is why, when we emerge on the broad piazza bordering the sea wall, I don't see anyone who looks better than us. And if we're the Beautiful People, Portofino's in a lot of trouble.
After a brief look around, we settle at an outdoor table next to a cafe modestly named the Ristorante Puny. "I like good food," says Dave, our leader. He has words with the Maitre d' and soon we are supping on tiny skewered shrimp, mussels with parmesan and tomato,
squid and swordfish in a special marinade, pate and bottomless carafes of the local white and red. Then pasta, always al dente in Italy, with sauce that neither puddles nor sits on top but coats each and every strand. Followed by cheeses and fruits, creme brulee and gelato and, of course, 100 percent pure caffein coffee. Not a bad way to break for lunch.
Fat and lazy, we do the tour of town, an amble around the horseshoe harbor hemmed in by wonderfully colorful houses. We admire the little fishing boats - they must have fished once - and goggle at three yachts of a size beyond immense. Home port, Cayman Islands.
We do the boutiques, the art galleries, the shops. But all the tourists, all the jaded rich can't obliterate Portofino's original pungeant flavor. From a window above an awning sporting the single word, Hermes, laundry hangs under the brilliant sun. You gotta love this town.
With a little of our lunch walked off, we head uphill to the church and its graveyard. Here the deceased lie on shelves, one on top of the other, with photographs of them when they were young or old, plain or sexy, solemn or with cigarettes drooping out of their mouths.
We continue past the castle built as protection against the Turks, through a piney woods over the Gulf of Tigullio to the faro, the lighthouse, and its views of the sea. Then back to the Portofino of every Italian guidebook and postcard.
They say the privileged few emerge from their cocoons to reclaim Portofino after the last of us peasants has left town. I'd love to stay and see them, these shimmering aliens; do they have the same number of arms and legs? But we are riding the Mediterranean Sea
toward our home in Camogli where we are Beautiful, too.
Next morning we're on the trail again. But not the one Dave scouted earlier. He'd abandoned it when he looked past his outside foot straight down to the sea. "I could just see myself saying to clients, 'walk this way.'"
As we start, two very old men come from the path, smiling at our boots and packs and shorts. "They've just hiked that trail," says George, a New Yorker. "When they started they were 15."
Our destination today is accessible only by foot or by boat, as it was in the year seven eleven. It is not a convenience store where you can pick up a sixpack after other stores have closed. It's the abbey of San Fruttuoso.
The trail Dave has chosen may not be death defying but it is dramatic enough. We hug the cliff like mountain goats from Manhattan, looking up toward that same old porcelain sky and down to a sheet of aquamarine. Without the path it would be impossible to climb the ver-
tiginous slope, but that's exactly what the good fathers did more than a thousand years ago. And they must not have been traveling light.
Portofino is tiny but San Fruttuoso could be tucked into one of its corners. The abbey's two tiers of windows resting on great stone arches, the 11th century church, the 16th century tower take up the
entire niche that faces the sea. If isolation is what they wanted, isolation is what they got. Noone could disturb their singleminded communion with God.
Except the Turks, which is why Andrea Doria erected the Torre di Doria to protect the abbey from their raids. And what are these almost naked bodies doing sprawled on the stony beach in front of the sacred site? It isn't penance, that's for sure.
No, today San Fruttuoso belongs to the likes of us. We come on foot or by boat with our hampers of food, our bottles of wine, our beach chairs and folding tables and decks of cards. We set up under the ancient arches. We stretch out on the pebbles and pretend they
don't hurt. We play water polo with the kids. We even, if we are nuns, hitch up our habits above our ankles and lie down to catch some rays.
But if we're American we head for Da Giovanni Ristorante Albergo Bar San Fruttuoso clinging to one side of the cove. Bar Georgio sits on the other. We eat lasagna pesto and frito misto and hope we won't be smitten by the horrified shades of the monks of old.
After a thoroughly satisfying afternoon we return once again to Camogli. Casa della Mogli as it once was, "home of wives" since the men were always at sea. Port of the fleet that sailed with Napolean. Where fishing boats still put out from the harbor and the medieval
Dragonera Castle dares the Saracens to try it again.
As fine as Portofino is I'm happy to be staying in Camogli. It may have less charm, but only slightly, and its stores don't close at the end of "the season." Children grow up here, they don't merely visit. Laundry hangs from the windows of the great curve of houses all
year long.
And, as Dave says, "We feel that at the end of the day people want to be really comfortable." It's in Camogli that I feel at home. Portofino may be the place where the elite meet to eat. But at the end of the day, Camogli's for me.
TRE LAGHI TRAVEL leads walking trips in Tuscany, the Cinque Terre, the Swiss/Italian Lake District, the Swiss Alps and Provence, France. The Portofino walk is part of their trip to the Cinque Terre. Walks are suitable for anyone who is reasonably fit. Guides accomodate guests of all abilities. For further information, contact them at 800 293-1117.
In Portland, OR, 503 221-2140.
WHAT TO WEAR: Warm days, cool evenings and the possibility of rain require shorts and long pants, t-shirts, long sleeve shirts and a sweater, a light weight rain jacket and collapsible umbrella, hiking boots, cap, sun glasses and sun screen. Casual clothing is suitable for dining, even in luxury hotels.
HOW TO GET THERE: Delta Airlines (800 241-4141) flies non-stop to Milan from New York City. The Cinque Terre tour begins in Camogli, 20 minutes by train from Genoa. From the Milan Central Railway Station, express trains to Genoa take about 2 hours.
TRAVEL BY CAR: Auto Europe, 800 223-5555, provides cars at the guaranteed lowest price with no cancellation penalty throughout Europe. Especially helpful is their 24 hour toll free telephone number to the American office should assistance be necessary.
