June 12--The Lonely Mountain, Erebor, or Mount Doom (you pick!)

What can I say, I was sad to see Villafranca go, it was honestly SUCH a cool town, but as today proved, this area of Spain is just pretty cool in general  The walk for the first 75% was pretty run of the mill – beautiful vistas, mountains, clouds mysteriously covering the peaks. There was one town we passed through that had a lumber mill which was pretty cool! I’m so glad we are back to mountainous areas. Although the plains of wheat and barley were beautiful in their own sense, I enjoy not knowing what is around the next corner, and more importantly, I don’t have to worry about the sun BEATING down on me ;)

But today we probably scaled the steepest mountain yet, and MAN that thing did not END! Today I went with the usual leaders of the pack – Tim and Isaac. They are fast walkers, but they also don’t stop for much – which makes collecting sellos difficult but not impossible. I just have to run and catch up with them every time I stop at a bar or a church, and as it turns out, being with them was both a curse and a blessing. The curse was, they did NOT stop as they were going up that mountain. Basically, the three-mile trek up was split into three parts in my mind. The first segment was beautiful, very green – which also meant VERY damp and quite muddy. It was also the steepest part, and for some reason Isaac and Tim wanted to RUN up it! Of course, we made it up, and came to the end of the first segment – the town that gave me a false sense of security. In my mind I think that there’s no way there’s MORE mountain, but then as I walk past the cows and houses, I see another rise above the tree line. The second segment was mostly in the sun, but was less steep and definitely not as bad. I was also booking it up this section because at this point I was BURNING cause I was so hot, and had put up my hair. That was great, but then my neck was exposed to the sun directly overhead, and I of course hadn’t brought sunscreen – so I was constantly trying to catch up to Tim so I could ask to use some of his. So, most of the segment was me trying to spot Tim ahead of me and using sunscreen as a motivation to keep pushing up the hill. The last segment was similar to the first, but less steep and included sections exposed to the sun. Thankfully, before we started this third segment, I had stopped in a bar to get a sello and we finally caught up to Isaac – who had basically run up the entire mountain. We all chugged some water, refilled our water bottles and began the last ascent to the summit and O Ciebrero which awaited us at the top. 

I have to admit, it was a GREAT view, and such a cute town, but MAN was it some work getting there. The curse of Isaac and Tim was that they were going SO FAST, but it was also the blessing. As we had discussed earlier in the day – if you are going to be in pain, you might as well make it as short as possible, so we pushed through the pain and got it over with. The added bonus to our speed revealed itself as we exited our hotel after taking showers and were greeted with the beginnings of a lightning storm. Sprinting to find shelter, we also found a spot for lunch and sat down. Throughout the meal, we saw raindrops so big and hitting the pavement so hard it created this eternal spray of water.  We saw hail, we saw lightning and within a second, heard lightning (like this stuff was CLOSE) and the power in our bar even went out for a few minutes. Thankfully, the power outage didn’t affect the gas stove that they were cooking on ;) Because we had pushed up the mountain, we were three of the four students who had beaten the rain to the top of the mountain. Everyone else not only had to follow the same path we did, but in the rain, and on the muddy, wet ground. 

The rest of the day in O Ciebrero was pretty chill. Once we got to the top, there wasn't much to do but look at the view and hang about town – which consisted of about 10 buildings surrounding a square. The rain did continue throughout the day, obscuring the view that had greeted us at the top of the slope. There were some fun shops that we visited, and a church to go see, as always. One cool thing – we stopped by a souvenir shop around 8:30 after dinner and because we were some of the only customers in the store, we were talking to the store owners as they restocked everything, and they told us about Gallego. It is the dialect almost everyone speaks in Galicia (which we had crossed into on our way up the mountain, saying goodbye to Castilla y Leon). It is a mixture of primarily Spanish and Portugese with a few influences from others' languages. We learned how to say a curse word, nice to meet you, and good night. The curse word was a joke when we first asked how to say something in Gallego, but it was pretty funny having the store owner's wife react to him trying to explain the use of the word :D It was a beautiful day, despite the hard climb, and it offered some GREAT photos. But, unfortunately you can see my red face in ALL of them ;)