Hiking in Basilicata, Italy - PART I

YAY!! I finally found the photos from our trip to Basilicata. 

They weren't deleted. 

They were just hiding in a different folder under a name I never would have guessed, 

cause' it was in Italian. 

Thank you dear husband. 

But, I accidentally deleted this post and had to rewrite it again. 

When will I learn to write my posts in a word document 
before I put it in my blog? 

Have you done this?

I keep on telling myself that I will not do this again and 

yet, I repeatedly write my posts directly on my blog.  

We set off with our map....no GPS, which has got its pros and cons. 

Pros: using a map keeps your brain young and requires you to trust yourself, ending up in a lovely unexpected location.

Cons: getting lost, stress.

Hiking in Basilicata is an experience which I highly recommend. This region has less tourists and traffic than other parts of Italy. We drove there during a very busy Easter weekend, and to our pleasant surprise all the traffic was going in the opposite direction to the more popular tourist areas. So we were quite lucky that we had a lot of the roads to ourselves, 

which is incredibly rare in Italy. 

One of the many roads in Basilicata. 

We don't think this was created by an earthquake, 

probably just a bad engineering job on the road. 

The crazy thing was we had to drive over this. 

Basilicata is different and not even many Italian tourists travel in this direction. Some may think it's slow and backward, but I think it's beautiful and interesting. The people are exposed to less tourists so they stare a lot at strangers. Even Italians remark about the differences here.

After more than 4 hours of driving we figured out that we were somewhere in the correct area, however, we couldn't find any hiking trails or paths that were marked on our hiking map. So, we decided just to park the car and find a path ourselves. Some trails lead to other people's homes and other paths lead to dead-ends. We finally found a larger path and followed it around and we were pleasantly surprised by rolling hills, local farms and the natural surrounding beauty. 

I love all the old trees growing everywhere. 

They're just beautiful. 

Sweet daisies

When I was a little girl, I used to sit on the grass and pick daisies and would say, "he loves me, he loves me not." 

Not knowing what this actually meant.

A beautiful old farm house. 

Many of these places dotted the hillside.

After a day of hiking and a lovely impromptu picnic, we headed back home. We saw the Carbinieri (federal police) and asked them about the lack of signs for trails, etc. They said, "there are many places to hike, but there are no signs that mark these trails. The infrastructure here isn't well developed." So, it's hit and miss. Oh well, doesn't matter. It was a lovely day and a different experience. And we were quite happy with our excursion. 

There are so many beautiful photos that I want to share with you and an 

unexpected surprise that there will be a PART II  of our Basilicata excursion.