Orchids of Bleniotal

A bit of a dull morning, but after a chilly breakfast outside the tent, with many coffee refills, 4 of us set off in the car to head up high above Bleniotal. It’s a long steep hairpinned bend road from 300m in the valley up to 1300m at Fontana. Fontana is a stone and wood house settlement, where you can walk steeply up through orchid and Enzian filled meadows to 2 even higher villages. This really is life at the limit, 3 people live here the whole year around. Mazzorign is at 1545m, a collection of about 20 houses an a little church.
After hiking up and looking around the villages, admiring the orchids, we headed down to Pontirone. The grotto, or small restaurant was open, so we stopped for a local craft beer and a little bit to eat. There was some kind of misunderstanding, we ordered one portion of the cheese, and one dried meat plate. Pretty straightforward. The waitress appeared with an extra side table, ok we thought. Then brought out 4 times what we ordered, so a meat and cheese plate equivalent per person! A strange situation, she spoke good German and my friends very good Italian! so it was the most expensive afternoon snack in the history of Tessin! Of course, we couldn’t eat it all, and took about one third back to the campsite.
Back at the campsite, we sat around chatting, and moaning about how full we were!
4.5km 350m ascent and 2.5 hours