| July 4, 2002 Have just returned from a 4 day jaunt through northern Portugal and Spain. Wonderful trip!! I took a bus (or 3) up into the Serra do Geres, a mountain range and national park in northern Portugal, right along the Spanish border. Beautiful green mountains with lakes at the bottom of the valleys. I stayed in a little village (called Geres), which was very touristy, but still nice. My goal was, of course, to get to the top of one of the many peaks surrounding me. The park info. place was no help (they have no marked trails), so I just started walking, figuring that as long as I was going up I was OK. I walked up a mountain face that was probably nice a year ago, but which has now been stripped of most of its trees. Good climb, and nice scenery on the other side of the valley, at least. Nearer the top, the trees came back. Anyway, when I got to the top of this particular part I saw that there was still much to climb and I continued on, climbing to the top of the next rocky peak, only to find the same situation, so I kept going. Finally I arrived at the top. Nope! Big valley and then another peak, probably 100m higher (1100m above sea level), but about a 1 hour hike away. So I went...by the time I got there I'd been walking about three hours, so I decided not to proceed to the next peak and turned around to go home. My knee was hurting at this point, so I decided not to go back down the same way I'd come (pretty steep), and went along the road instead. Thought it would be about 8 or 10km total. It was 15! So I walked and walked. No traffic on the road, which was a shame beacuse I'd decided to hitchhike home. I walked for 10 km before anyone came by in my direction (that was 2 hours!!). Anyway, a nice man saved me from another 5km walking downhill. The next day I headed back up to my old haunts in Pontevedra, Spain, where I did my English teaching course last spring. Saw my old teachers and friend, Maria, and ate some lovely Spanish tapas, which I had really missed! A lovely few days. Tomorrow I'm going to float along the Douro river with a few friends, then it's time to start packing, cleaning and organizing to come home next Wednesday, the 10th. Yay! Take care, Phil |
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| You can see the village I stayed in - it's the highest houses in the valley. I climed almost to the top of the mountain on the left! The road back took me to the other side of the mountain, back toward the front of the picture to above the lake you can see at the bottom. Then I got my ride home! |