GRAN PARADISO - PARADISE IN THE ALPS

The Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso are part of the Italian Alps and well-known for the fact that it used to be owned by one of Italians noblemen - he protected the area well and introduced lots of wildlife, mainly Steenbok. Since these Steenbok are well used to the presence of humans, they are easy to see and approach.

This did attract us. So Gricha and I drove down to Italy, got turned inside out by the Italian immigration (they didn't trust two Dutch guys with Indonesian looks) and started our trip from a place called Aosta.

Unfortunately we didn't find Gran Paradiso very suitable for multi-day hikes and returning to the starting point circuit) specially if you want to avoid traversing glaciers. So what we did is climbing up, enjoyed some days up in the mountains, and going down the other side of the mountain. After that we had to climb up again.

Fortunately the views and the Steenbok made the effort very much worth it. But I can tell you we did end up with quite some blisters - one day we even had to descend almost 2000 meters%

All in all the Gran Paradiso is a beatiful area with Steenbok very easy to see and photograph, but once you have glacier-experience it's much more fun so you can stay up in the mountains without having to descend all the time.