The road to Maberga

The road to Maberga is a lot of things. It's a lot of different things to different people. Everyone has their own thoughts about our little passage to paradise. Here's a small compilation of adjectives people have used to describe it:

beautiful
peaceful
lush
cozy
cute
narrow
curvy
steep
bumpy
crappy
scary
dangerous

and, my personal favorite,

fuckin'

(as in, "you've got to be kidding me!!! That's your fuckin' road!" or "I love your house but I just don't want to drive up your fuckin' road." or "when are they going to fix your fuckin' road?", anyway, you get the idea)

Not that I'm particularly courageous behind the wheel, but I must say that our road has never really bothered me all that much. The very first time we drove up here, we had been looking at "houses" (read: stone rubble ruins)all day throughout the mountains of Liguria. We had been on some roads that day that made the road to Maberga seem like a 4 lane highway. Once we moved up here and I was driving it daily, I began to notice that a few of the turns were a bit tight and there were certain patches that could use some work.

In particular there is one really bad spot. It's referred to by the neighbors as the "bridge". The origin of the name coming from the fact that a bridge was NEEDED in this particular spot, not that one EXISTED. Remember the Maberga Lake? That's the place. It's not actually accurate of me to call it a lake either since the water is moving. It's where all the water from the mountain rushes down to the valley to join the Argentina River, leading eventually to the sea. Since the original road was put down (sometime in the 1980's) this running water has been washing away the land UNDER the road. This was dangerous.

There had been talk for years of fixing this spot but there was never enough money. Our little gated community, like all gated communities, requires dues. Annual financial payments made, based on the amount of land you have, for the purpose of maintaining the road. Well, lots of folks don't like paying those dues and had fallen behind. Until last month when the new president of our little group changed the lock on the gate and gave the new keys only people who were paid up. Suddenly, we had enough money to build us a bridge.

And that's exactly what we did last weekend. A small group of hard-core Mabergese volunteers (aka: the people with land ABOVE the bad spot in the road) gathered and, well, here's a little slideshow I put together....