Alone in the Swiss Hidden Valleys

Separate point-of-view hiking video of the Val Bavona trail:    • The Swiss Valley frozen in the 16th Centur...   GPX tracks: Day 1 – Val Bavona: https://connect.garmin.com/app/activi... Day 2 – Val Lavizzara: https://connect.garmin.com/app/activi... Val Bavona and Val Lavizzara, the wait was all worth it. Last weekend my family and I finally went to the end of Valle Maggia, in the Swiss Canton of Ticino, to visit the two valleys with a legendary reputation of having forgotten to move on in time a few centuries ago. We arrived in Bignasco, where the two valleys meet, and booked the hotel for the night in the late morning, then took the 10:40 post bus to the end of Valle Bavona to hike our way back to Bignasco. On the bus there were about 20 people, and they were pretty much all the people on the hiking path for the whole day, as there is just one bus at 8:40 and one at 10:40 and most people do only one way. Along the ride several people got off in one of the villages, so it was just a handful of us who got off at the last stop in San Carlo. The others quickly went their way, and we were almost the only hikers on the path for the whole day. And it was May 1st, a public holiday in many places, on a perfect spring day: if there was no one on that day, I am not sure when people should come to see this exceptionally beautiful corner of planet earth. There are 12 stone villages preserved as they were hundreds of years ago. Some of them, like Sonlerto and Foroglio, look almost unreal in how perfect they are…but they are, in fact, real. Foroglio is the only place where we found both commercial activity and people. There was in fact one single restaurant open in the whole valley, and a few tens of people drove up there for lunch. We saw far more people there than during the whole day spread across the valley. From Foroglio the hike continues downhill, but I made a detour to the top of the famous waterfall, where there is another corner which seemed painted. Definitely add those extra 60–90 minutes to your hike if you are there. We spent the night at the Locanda Turisti in Bignasco, and the next day we went by bus up the other valley, Val Lavizzara, and came down walking. We arrived in Mogno with the famous church by Botta, and continued downstream. If we thought that Val Bavona was deserted, here it was the next level. We didn’t cross a single hiker along the whole Mogno–Broglio stretch that we walked...but also not a single open restaurant / café / shop. We had some food with us, and then found out that in Prato Sornico there is a small fully self-service minimarket where we loaded a bit of calories. Val Lavizzara is less picture-perfect than Val Bavona, but nonetheless very beautiful, and the feeling of having it all to yourself makes it a bit special. The whole area is world-class beautiful, in a unique way, and you can make it even better by doing a 3–4 day hiking loop, going up one of the valleys, hiking the fantastic Cristallina massif and sleeping at the legendary Cristallina Hut, which I have done on separate occasions, and coming down from the other valley. GPX tracks: Day 1 – Val Bavona: https://connect.garmin.com/app/activi... Day 2 – Val Lavizzara: https://connect.garmin.com/app/activi... I also made a separate point-of-view hiking video of the Val Bavona trail:    • The Swiss Valley frozen in the 16th Centur...   Let me know any question, comment, or recommendation.