This vacation has a fever and the prescription is more cowbell!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ufj5P3W7Jw

(In rural Spain in a hotel on a cow farm - a real cow farm - with no internet access.  Back to notepad for now).

After we left Porto, we were in the country.  Cows and sheep in pastures all along the way.  We headed to the tiny town of Mondim de Basto in the Douro Valley, still in Portugal. We were pretty excited about our next hotel as it had a spa and a pool.  I wanted a pedicure and Alisma wanted to swim in the pool.  Well, it turns out the spa is all about massages and water treatments, no pedicures.  And the pool was outside and unheated.  So 0 for 2 on that one.  It was a nice hotel though.  There was nothing out there to do.  They had a fancy restaurant so we went to dinner.  I had Duck Confit (very tasty) and Alisma had mushroom risotta (also tasty). We also had green wine.  I just thought this was what they call white wine but not so as there was both green and white wine on the menu.  I'm not exactly sure of the difference but the green wine was a bit bubbly so maybe that? We both had cheesecake for dessert (not so tasty, the use fresh cheese instead of cream cheese so it didn't have much flavour).  Dinner wasn't until 8:30 so after that, we just went to bed.

Too cool for pool

Buffet breakfast and then north to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the town at the end of the Camino trail.  There are tons of 'pilgrims' walking around, mostly milling around the cathedral.  Plus, there was some sort of Medieval festival going on (or maybe there is always people in costume pretending to sword fight in the plaza?).  I barely took any pictures here.  First, my camera card filled up after just a couple of shots that evening.  And second, for such an important place to so many people, it wasn't that interesting or different from everywhere else. We arrived too late for lunch, everywhere closes at 4pm and way to early for dinner, starting at 8pm, so we had cheese crepes and a churro filled with cream (for me) or chocolate (for Alisma).

Medieval market

P.R. Girasol, our hostel, was fine.  3rd floor (5th).  Next morning we slept late but still had a hard time finding somewhere open for breakfast at 9:30am.  It is a different world here in the morning.  We headed out of town by 11.  On to our next stop in La Ercina, another rural hotel.  We had 4 sheep out back with cow bells (sheep bells?) that tickled constantly.  We liked the sheep.

Our room

One of our sheep

There was also a little timid dog that greeted us as we arrived.  This is him the next morning.  I love the beware of dog sign.

Vicious dog alert!

Once we dumped our bags in our room, we wanted to see the Covadonga Lakes.  It was almost 6 but we still had time.  The lakes are very high up a windy mountain road (does this remind you of anything).  Up, up, up.  Narrow roads with few guardrails. And cows in the road to add to the challenge.   Alisma had control of the camera for all road cow incidents.

 We stopped at a couple of miradors (viewpoints which they translate as points of view) and all we could hear were cowbells from all directions, tickling across the valleys.    As we were ascending, the clouds were descending.  We had driven pretty far so we didn't turn back but we were starting to worry that there wouldn't be any visible lakes when we got to the top.  However, the luck of dumb tourists, the clouds lifted as we got to the second lake.  Lovely.  There was even a restaurant and a cheese monger, but I really wanted to head back down before it got dark, and it was almost 7 by this time.  Plus, our gas light had come on as we got to the top so that had to be dealt with.

That's the road down there!

Clouds roll in

The lakes:

The first lake, barely visable

The second lake, as the clouds lifted

A couple of shots as we headed back downhill.

A Basilica on the hill

Back at the hotel, we decided to just eat there.  But when I asked if we could eat outside, the guy behind the counter said yes and then just stared at us from the bar.  Since the menu was limited, we just decided to head into 'town', get gas and dinner.  We found the gas station, good.  Then we stopped at 'Las Palmeras' restaurant.  We were a bit worried at first as only men were in the bar (there was a game on) but we were hungry so we sat outside and hoped for better service.  We had seen signs for 'Siderias' (Cider) in a few places so we asked for a bottle of cider (they are big bottles).  There is a ritual with cider here. It is supposed to be poured from a great height and only cover the bottom of the glass, then the bit in the glass is to be drunk immediately. This involves a lot of pouring and drinking.  It is really good.  Cloudy with sediments, tart and fresh.  It said 6% but I don't think anyone is checking these little cideries and it was much higher.  We also got the tableau of queso (cheese plate) because this area is a major cheese producing area.  five kinds, all delicious.  I asked our waitor (owner) to write down all of the names so I could add them to my list (see list).  Alisma also had a salad and I had calamari.

Cheese plate!  That green stuff in the middle turned out
to be an apple jelly, which was wonderful with the cheese

This was the slab of bread, one each,
that we got with the cheese

Sidra.  Cider, one mouthful at a time.

Back to our room and our sheep (and our  little dog).  Next morning we had another free buffet breakfast with our room.  Then we went to the Picas de Europa. These are the mountains all around.  There is a trail called Cares Gorge that is 15 km long plus 15 km return.  There was no way we were going to do the whole thing but we wanted to do a bit of it.  It was quite a drive, once again, to get to the trail. Up, up, up more mountains.  We got to almost the end of the road and lucked into a parking spot right at the trail head.  Ah, the trail.  Steep and rocky pretty much sums it up.  Surrounded by beautiful scenery, it sort of follows the river Cares, at least until we got too high to see the river.  The weather was perfect for us.  We were surprised there were so few people on the trail.   One couple passed us and we passes another on the way back, that was it.  We walked up for about an hour and a half (straight up) and then about an hour 15 back.

Here are a million photos of our trek.

These were the trail markers

The trail

More trails

Goats, this is when we turned around
unrelated to the goats

Vultures, very reassuring

This was the beginning of the trail,
looking back

Our timing was impeccable, it started to rain soon after.   We were parked near the end of the road, as I mentioned, but the end was just around a curve.  Alisma walked up to see if there was a turn around up top.  She came back and said 'um, it seems we didn't take the Gorge trail'.  The entrance was a little higher up.  We had taken some other trail.  That would explain the lack of other hikers. I suspect we took a much more difficult trail but I can't confirm that as we did not attempt the gorge trail as a second hike.

(Update, now that we have internet, Alisma found our trail.  It was much steeper that the Gorge trail, but shorter.  Shorter didn't matter to us since we never made it to the end of either.)

We stopped in the town at the bottom of the road to the trail for lunch. We had seen lots of cheese shops so we were stoked.  First lunch with another cider.  Alisma ordered some complicated stacked lunch and I was all confused so just ordered a corn chipatti.  After the waitress left, I asked what Alisma ordered and she showed me on the menu (I took a picture but I can't remember the name right now).  I said that it has meat in it.  Not just meat, pork tongue. oops.  So, I got the pork tongue, cheese and tomato stack and Alisma ate the chapatti.   I am not a fan of tongue but it was delicious.
Then we popped into a Cuevo de Queso (Cheese Cave).  I bought two of the types of cheese we had tried the night before plus some of that apple jelly stuff and a cider (and some chocolate).  I forgot that we are giving up the car tomorrow and I will have to carry all of that (plus my platter etc) for two more days.  Oh well, cheese!

The Millefeuille

#9, not a vegetarian option

The town, name unknown

The cheese cave, exterior

The cheese cave, interior

We didn't have far to drive to our next rural hotel, the Casona de Dos Lagos.  They take the rural part of their rural hotels very seriously here.  Our last place had sheep, this place has a cow feeding station in the parking lot.  Also another little dog (which bit my shoe) and at least 3 cats.  And one strange lady named Maria who checked us in.  She started by asking if I spoke French. Alisma answered that she spoke a little.  So, this woman, who does not speak French or English and apparently, not Spanish, tried to communicate in a mix of terrible Spanfrenlish.  No one knew what anyone was saying.  But that didn't stop her from talking, a lot, she spend a full two minutes trying to tell us the cat was a cat and it was black.  This seemed unnecessary info (and blatantly obvious to boot).  I can't begin to tell you how long the taking of the passport info took.  LONG!.  Eventually we got our room and then she spent many minutes saying things about the bathroom and trying to say towels in her secret language.  An eternity later, she left and we immediately tried to sign onto the internet.  No internet.  So, I tried wandering around the yard (which is lovely and has a little lake, one of the two lagos I assume) when Maria found me and started talking again.  This time, I just gave up and spoke in Spanish.  She was like 'you speak Spanish?'.  It turns out she speaks Spanish, she had just assumed we were French for some reason (Alisma's wildly exotic name perhaps?).  Anyway,  no internet.  It is raining (really raining, pouring) so we are early to bed, reading our evening in rural Spain away.

Maria, filling in forms, so slowly

Tiny McBitey, in the lobby

This was in  the parking lot

Tomorrow, we drop off the car and our departure becomes that much closer (and real).