Looking back down on the pass, it's pretty awesome how twisty
road is as you come up the south/west slope of Stelvio.
Everybody stops every few minutes to take some photos and do
a little bit of hiking.
We just stop and take dorky pictures.
In the distance, you can see the buildings at the top of the pass.
Ooooh! Grass. We take weird photos sometimes.
We trundle into 'town', realising that we're just one of a horde
of people up and about at the top of the mountain.
There are even hotels here for the truly hardcore.
And dorky tourists from who knows where.
There are lots of cool buildings to hike up to and wander
around. A lot of people less gear-laden than the motorcyclists
like to come and do some serious hiking around here.
You can start to see how fun the ride down is too.
But first: food. MmmmMMmmm ...
It takes a few seconds to get your bearings up here -- there's an
awful lot going on.
And we showed up at like 14.30, which means that lunch was
basically over.
Eeek! Nobody said there'd be girls up here!
Apparently bikers aren't the only performance riders up here.
Actually, there were a tonne of bicyclists, which is just awesome
really.
We stopped and had a nice lunch of salad and sausages, and
enjoyed the scenery while we could. It was still pretty warm
up top though.
We were completey exhausted after coming down the pass and
stopped for the night around 16.30. We spent the night in a
small town near Merano (Meran) before setting out the next
morning for Passo Rombo (Timmelsjoch).
This part of Italy is more German than anything else, and
most business and life is conducted in German here.
Working our way up to Rombo. It's ¡muy espectacular!
You can see the road as it carves its way up the mountain.
Boy!
Lots of other bikers enjoying the reprieve from the heat up here
and having a good time.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh.
You get to pass through a spooky little tunnel right near the
top. wooooooo!
Wooohoo! We made it.
And are now in another country.
Oooh, the road down looks like fun.
There are no bathrooms up here, so you have to improvise.
The 'snack bar' thingie at the top of the pass is a bit sad
looking, so we continued on the way down the mountain and ...
... stopped for strudel in Austria. It was unbelievably good.
And they had a playground. Sweeeet!
It was brutally hot, but sunny and beautiful.