Sunday, March 18, 2012 - We’re up early enough to go out for a coffee. M gets the headache if he doesn’t get his caffeine, and let’s face it we enjoy our morning jaunts. Atiol arrived at the apt while J and M were out retrieving the car from the bowels of the parkade. M parks nearby our place so we can load everything up and then we are off. Today’s drive will take us to Broto and then on to the tiny village Oto, north of Huesca just outside the Ordessa National Park.
We travel along a different route to Pamplona than we did the other day, likely the next valley over to the west. Again it is a great drive past some smaller Spanish villages.
We drive near the outskirts of Pamplona and we notice how industrial it is, even passed a couple of German company factories, namely VW and Liebehrr. As we are leaving the Pamplona area M was talking with J about something and did not hear Navi tell him to take an exit. So we drove along while Navi recalculated and next happened upon this amazing aquaduct structure, the best we’ve seen on our adventure – awesome.
As well, we’re on the Camino de Santiago once again. We read that there are two routes that converge near Pamplona, one that actually starts in Paris the other St. Jean Pied de Pont from the other day.
Once we left this area, we traveled along winding roads through more small rural villages. The scenery was great, it’ll even be nicer in a couple weeks when the leaves come out on the many deciduous trees that cover the mountainsides. We enjoyed the drive.
We stopped for lunch in a town called Beischa – it reminded us of Canmore, with all its stone exteriors. Except here, the rock is real stone! We wondered what brought people here to this area, and we found that there is skiing in the area, about an hour away, lots of nordic skiing and mountains to enjoy hiking, and roads for biking. This area would be a great escape from the heat in the summer. We had some great tapas and refreshments before our last 30 km drive to the village. We climbed up a winding road to about 1200m before decending along an equally windy stretch to the valley below that hosts Broto and Oto.
This week we are staying in a 16th century medieval tower, Torre de Oto, that was totally restored and has been available since 2008 to rent. The owners have had it in their family for several hundred years. Actually it was owned at one time by a duke who purchased it from the village in the 1800’s when the village needed money. Across the lane the owners also have a 21room building where her father had grown up. This little village is full of homes built of rock. The view from this former defensive, communication tower is awesome, overlooking the valley. We were expecting rain and cold, however, today it was partly clouded and warmer than anticipated.
When we talked to Elena, she told us this area has not had rain or snow this winter, very unusual. They now are worrying about water rationing for the summer. At this time of year, it is usually greener. There usually is snow from Dec. until March. We were supposed to have rain today, but its not here, so we get to admire the valley view.
The tower has four floors, the lowest having a kitchen/dining area and a half bath with a cool rock sink. The second is the sitting area with TV and stereo, the third has the master bedroom, with a queen bed – a luxury in Europe and an ensuite bathroom. The fourth is where J is sleeping outfitted with twin beds, a desk (convenient for his schoolwork time) and his own ensuite. There is a published book on the restoration of the tower, that showed the before and after shots and all the work entailed to bring it to the wonderful condition it is in now. We hang out for the rest of the day, they have satellite TV here so M finds the other semi-final of the tennis match we watched yesterday, so we end the day watching Federer in excellent form defeat Nadal.
Monday, March 19, 2012 – We wake to blue sky with a few clouds, great, as we weren’t expecting it. The temperature is in the early teens, so we’re pleased at the forecast was calling for 3C for the highs for the first half of the week. We’re hoping to make use of the bikes that are here. The wind is a bit brisk so we’re going to have to locate some gloves before heading out.
We went into Broto, 1km away to check out the grocery store to pick up a few things. There wasn’t a huge selection, but we’ll manage instead of driving back the 30 km or so to Bescias to a larger shop. We even found a bakery to buy fresh bread. This town is very small as well – really dealing with the outdoor pursuit tourists, or the residents who farm. Right below our place is a farm, bringing forth its occasional mooing, sheep bell ringing as well as that fresh cow smell! Brings back memories of when we stayed up in Northern Germany last May!
Elena had told us of a hike up to an abandoned village that we could see from the tower that we wanted to see if we could reach. J opted to stay behind to work on a project. Off we set in search of the trail. For the first 35 min or so we searched, walking through the campground, then a number of farmer fields with a fairly good coating of dried manure. It brought back memories for M, he wasn’t enjoying the dried dung – “back then I had clothes and boots especially for this kind of thing”.
Even though there were numerous treks and a couple of tractor trails, we still couldn’t find the trail. We decided to follow a forestry road, that led us along side a dried up creek bed. By now we had been out walking for over an hour, and still no trail, so, we continued up the valley along the creek bed and decide to just enjoy the outdoors. The creek bed walls are loaded with layered rock – not hard to see where the supplies came from for the many homes and walls made from rock! We eventually decided to call it quits and backtrack and return home. We had been gone for about 2 ½ hours. It felt great to be in the mountains once again.
We enjoyed dinner and a movie before retiring for the night.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 – The campground, less than 10 min. by foot has WiFi. The tower’s system went out last week and Elena told us being Spain, and then being rural Spain, it could take a while to get it fixed. So, we will make do with this. We had checked the place out yesterday morning when we went for coffee. Armed with the computers, Ipod and Iphone, we were off. Everyone of us had an agenda – update on sports, hockey as well as March Madness, emails to friends and family, download schoolwork related material. We ended up being there for a couple of hours, but managed to accomplish what needs to be done.
On the way back to the tower for lunch, J and T take a detour to check out a sign she saw on the way down, perhaps it might be the trail head we were looking for yesterday. Sure enough it is! Right on, after lunch while J again opted out of the hike to do more schoolwork, we were off. The sun is shining – another bonus day with the temp around 12C. The wind is brisk again today, but as we begin the hike, we become sheltered.
The trail takes us between 2 levels of farmers’ fields to begin a climb that continues for the next 1 hour 20 minutes. We only got off track once, having misinterpreted a sign. Way up in these hills are rock-terraced fields as well. Again we wonder – what caused these people to decide to settle way up here with nothing around. It would have been a ton of work to terrace the mountainside to provide grazing and cultivated land. Elena told us when that before the village was abandoned, kids would walk down from this village barefoot (as they were poor) to attend school. While hiking up the steady incline both of us thought that life was certainly tougher back then.
When we finally reached the location of the village, we wondered among rock walls, ruins and partial remains of buildings. Far below we could see both our village Oto, as well as Broto. We could also see the bare and snow covered peaks of Odresa National Park. After taking some photos, resting and quenching our thirst we were off on our downhill trek. We had to be careful along the way as there were many spots with lose rock. Our descent took us more than an hour. Both of us were pleased with the excursion for the afternoon and were looking forward to sitting down and having a cold one. Our bodies were telling us we had a good hike today.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - We’re low on a few staples and needed to get some gloves so we can go out biking, so we decided to check out the other town, Torla about 4 km from here. It is the town at the entrance to the national park. Driving through we didn’t see a grocery store, but decided to keep driving to check out some of the park. We were able to drive about 10km before the road came to an end. The scenery was great. There were rugged sheer rock faces, reminding us of home and the scenery near Banff. We could definitely see how this area became designated as a national park.
When we returned to the town, we found a shop to buy gloves and a grocery store, but it had even less than the one in Broto. We picked up a few things here and then returned to Broto to buy some meat for dinner for the next two nights. Our fridge in the tower is only bar-sized so we’re limited to space. Once we stepped out of the shop, the mist had turned into rain and as the day progressed, so did the steadiness of the precip. Actually it turned into snow but didn’t stay at this elevation. Where we had hiked yesterday is now snow covered. So we enjoyed an afternoon in, reading and relaxing, with J doing some more schoolwork.
Thursday, March 22, 2012 – It’s overcast today, although not as low ceiling as yesterday. The ground is still too wet to go out cycling, we’ll likely go tomorrow. After our workout and breakfast, we went to the local campground restaurant and lounge to do some more Internet work. While we were there, several locals came in for a drink, must be their mid day break – or chat time.
Later in the afternoon, T walked back into Broto to see if the bakery was open. She wandered the narrow walkways of both villages and enjoyed the feeling of stepping back in time along the cobbled laneways amongst the stone houses, some restored and some still standing but in disrepair. She could certainly see why some people would chose to come up here to spend time. The villages have been here for a long time. At one time Broto had a prison tower as well as communication tower for defensive purposes as well as the place we were staying in.
Tonight after a warm meal of great beef stew, we sat down to watch “Where the Wild Things Are” and watched some TV with English (M had found an audio button on the satellite remote that actually let us change the language back to its original version, so we could watch shows in English - we do not know if we could have done this at any of the other places we have stayed that had satellite TV but we will try this once we get to France). We even managed to watch an episode of “House”. We have missed a year of episodes so we were wondering what happened to a couple of the main characters. I guess we’ll find out when we return home.
Friday, March 23, 2012 – We wake to some mist in the valley that quickly burned off to reveal blue sky. The valley is beautiful with snowcapped ridges and after the morning schoolwork and WiFi work at the nearby cafe, we decide to try out the bikes that are in the storage room.
And here are three successive views from Oto of the abandoned village we hiked to the other day.
We rode along paved road for a bit and then along gravel that was fairly rough. As J’s bike did not exactly fit him he found this somewhat challenging and quickly all our butts were getting sore. Still we enjoyed about an hour ride in the sun, it feels great to be biking again. It was ironic that the day we finally have good weather to ride the bikes was also the day that it was so warm we did n ot need the gloves we had bought. Oh well, perhaps they will be needed when we get a chance to bike in France. We enjoyed dinner and watched more of our shows in English, then M found one of his favorite shows NCIS on and watched back to back episodes until about 1:30 AM (before he decided to stop although there was another one that started then too). One of the thngs we have come to like about TV here in Europe is that in several countries all the commercials for a show happen at once for like 10 – 15 minutes, so you can do something else during the commercials and then watch the entire show uninterrupted.
Saturday, March 24, 2012 – We slept in today and again went to the WiFi spot just in case the one next week is not as fast as this one. It’s much busier around the campground as it’s the weekend and likely people who keep their trailers here are up for the weekend. We decided to walk into Broto to pick up a couple of things at the grocer as well as to the bakeshop. It is the warmest day this week and none of us wear jackets.
We found what we needed in the shops and then went for a walk along the river and found a restaurant to sit on the terrace and have lunch. J went down to the river shore and played on the rocks and got a bit wet, while we waited for our orders to arrive. While sitting at the restaurant we think we saw Anthony Quinn (?).
And we enjoyed the views of Broto.
We had wonderful croquettes con jamon (ham and cheese) for a starter and then hamburgers that were delicious. The burgers were a mix of beef, mushroom and pancetta – a wonderful combination.
Once we finished lunch we walked to check out the waterfalls that carved its way through the cliffs. We could see where the climbers set up to practice climbing the cliffs. It was a great sight! We ambled back to the tower to enjoy the rest of the afternoon. It has been a wonderful week enjoying the outdoors and this beautiful part of Spain.
It has been a wonderful time in Spain over the weeks spent in the different parts. We traveled along some historic passes and roads, through different regions and cities, all adding to a very enjoyable and memorable time in this country. We have had a chance to see a great deal of the country and experience the different cultures within the various provinces or regions. We’re so glad to have had the opportunity to experience Spain!
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