7 June to La Faba

Is there anything better than a cold fountain at the end of a hot walk?

Your pack is off your back, the cool breeze starts to dry your shirt, your feet sting and then soothe, and you know you don’t have to take any more steps and so you feel a little more energetic than you had climbing the last hill.

It feels like a long time since you were passing through the chestnut groves and negotiating the steep downhill at daybreak.

It was steep enough for one of the girls who came down after me to take a tumble.
I had a different adventure at about the same spot. My legs were a bit wobbly from trying to stay upright when…..
I saw a long brown dead snake lying on the path and was pleased I would actually get a good photo of this one – it was stretched right across the path. As I leant down to get a good angle the jolly thing started slithering towards the plants at the edge of the path. Now I was Really Very Wobbly, but managed to jump back quickly. Simultaneously I decided a bad photo was better than no photo, especially of such a long one, so I ventured a little bit closer:

Let me tell you, it didn’t take me long to get the rest of the way down the hill!

The rest of the day was spent almost exclusively road walking, with a soundtrack made up variously of traffic noise from a nearby (and sometimes far overhead) major highway and babbling brooks-streams-rivers that we repeatedly crossed.

Little villages appeared regularly and provided a spot to sit and rest. If I had realised how hot it was going to get I would probably have not dilly-dallied around quite so much, but it was nice to be totally relaxed and enjoying every step.

I had been planning on buying some pasta at the last village to cook up for dinner….but the shop had drinks and fruit and not much else, so I was stuck having to go out for dinner…which actually turned out to be not quite as good as it sounds as the weather turned to “isolated thunderstorms”, which appeared to be centered right over where we were.

Mountain storms can be quite the adventure! It got so dark, other than the lightning flashes, at 5:30pm, lights were necessary – quite a change from usually still being able to read after 10pm.

Forecast is for more rain tomorrow, but everyone is hoping for clear skies to be able to see where we have come from and where we are going when we get to the top of the mountain.

We won’t be taking these guys who make the trip twice a day, but we saw them as we went to dinner (which, incidentally, we had with their owner):

The place was aptly described as hippy-ish. It’s in a makeshift shelter because the owner’s Refugio burnt to the ground two years ago – he’s rebuilding it, and cooks a vegetarian dinner for up to ten pilgrims each evening. Produce from his garden. Alcohol homemade. Tea brewed with mint, fennel and cayenne pepper from the village.