Looking down on the River Corsaglio

Taking a breather

A woodcutters hut

Another damned hill my mother's making me walk up.

There was some fog but mostly wood smoke in the air.

Check out the website for the caves.  www.grottadibossea.com

Stalactite the length of 3 men

That's a walking bridge over the falls

My, oh my, what a day yesterday.  We went to see the Grotta di Bossea, a huge cave complex in the lower mountains in the province of Cuneo, towards France.  The photos we took don't do it justice so I have included it's website.  The place is enormous.  From top to bottom the height is over 100 meters.  That's 328+  feet (no I did not convert that in my head) or a 30 story building?  The main chamber could fit 3 cathedrals.  It was formed 200 million years ago by a the river Corsaglia which runs through the caves roaring and tumbling.  There is a small lake and a waterfall.  Of course there are tons of stairs cause this darn country is all made up of steep hills and stairs!  My calves are again killing me.  The tour lasted over an hour.  Very cool.  The area around the caves is another story.  I'd never really seen hillbilly Italy.  It's in an part of the mountains without ski resorts or lakes or much of anything so there is little to no tourism.  The mountains are very close in and the slopes are vertical.  (There seem to be quite a few quarries in the area.)  Consequently I think the folks there don't see much sun.  The people seem to be "woodsmen", cutting and stacking logs all over every hillside.  There are a lot of goats wandering around and not much else.  The few villages we saw are very poor with half the ancient buildings abandoned and falling down. Sadly some of the ruins are inhabited.   I think we saw 3 people before we went to the caves where we found a couple Italian families and some French guys.  It was a grey day and the air was filled with smoke from all of the fires these woodcutters were burning.  The whole atmosphere was very dueling banjo-y.  Sort of creepy.  We did however take a walk up one of the steep hills to get a better view of the valley.  Not the place to go if you suffer from fear of heights. 

After that excitement we came home, changed, and went out for dinner with friends in the city.  As we were leaving the restaurant Gian Piero saw a car being lifted onto a tow truck down the street and joked that it was our friend"s.  It was.  An hour and 300 bucks later (I'll write about the ticketing process later) we headed home.   xxoo me