It's hard for me to write about how the day started when I'm so excited about how it ended. Yeh! We made it over The pass and are thrilled to be in Spain at last. People are around in the towns , restaurants are open, there are little markets, and it was easy to find a place to stay....Al is already tucked into his sleeping sack and a warm comfort on sound asleep and it's all of 9:30. He had two falls today with his pack on, saved himself with his hiking stick but he thinks those have just added to his over all stiffness. We also have had such a hard time finding things open in France that we haven't had enough proteins or veggies...one does need more than bread and cheese. So tonight we just finished a great meal at the local bar, super salad and big pieces of pull apart, melt in your mouth beef chunks and the Local new wine...Al calls it the $3 wine, it's vino tinto even I can drink.
So this is how the day started...pouring rain, a bad forecast for weather on the mountain but only getting worse till Sat. So we had to either go for it or blow the whole thing off. We both were not ready to call it off and felt confident we could do it. We walked up to the main road from the campground Chalet into town knowing the market opened at 8:30 and needed to get something for lunch and snacks, after a coffee at the bar we headed up the valley.
Even though it was cold and wet it was beautiful. Greens of every shade and so many plants that you sometimes see dried in florist shops to use as fill in flower decorations. Many of them were familiar to me from growing up on the farm...Jack in the Pulpits, and Trilliums in France. Not sure of the ones in the picture.
Above is a French National Parc symbol, head of an Izard (Pyrenean mountain antelope or chamois) just as we were entering the beechwood forest.
Around 11:30 it started to snow, huge coin sized flakes so pretty in breaks in the trees with the snow capped mountains peeking through. On the other hand we had a whole lot of altitude to gain and several hours of hiking left to do. Maybe an hour later Al took this pic of me as it was continued to get colder. Still little flowers in the small meadow.
800 or so meters higher than breakfast we make it to the top , we arrive at the same time as a women biking from Holland who started from Holland May 9th. She said she had married, then took care of her husbands mother then had two daughter, now 18 and 15 and she had never done anything on her own before so this was her time. She was probably 6 plus ft tall and she said the climb was easy for her, that she had been a skater in her youth. We cheered for each other, took a few pic first one looking back toward France and the next into sunny Spain. The bar on the Spanish side was open for coffee and bread, and bites of chorizo.. and a little rest before starting down.
7.7 km to come down...yeh all down but still a bit treacherous in places due to the rocks, every thing on this side is strikingly different. The little wild flowers are bigger and brighter colored species. Clearings and small grasses areas filled with wild blub flowers I must have taken 40 pics of flowers on the way down, even violets.
One other difference I noticed about the French and Spanish Caminos at least... On the way down today from Somport or Candanchu there were at least three little shelters of some kind where you could get out of the weather if you needed too... France ..none..ok well some of these are left over from the 13th century but they still make it nice.
All is well on the Camino....still hoping for warmer weather. It was in the 40's at dinner time. Tonight it is predicted to be 2c they say will feel like -6 c. Or 32 F Eek...have to walk fast further south.
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