Lescun and the French Pyrenees

We left Spain and traveled towards our next host in Oloron-Sainte-Marie.  Elisabeth and her teenage daughter were not at the house when we arrived, so she told us over the phone to just break into the house through the back door.

They were really wonderful people, and during our time staying there we discovered an interesting coincidence.  Elisabeth worked for a conservation group that had recently been focusing on bear-livestock interactions, and they were trying to come up with some good strategies to protect the bears while preventing livestock predation.  In their desperation to come up with some answers they paid a lot of money to have Chris Servheen - coming from the university in Missoula - teach them some methods to deal with the bears.  To put it lightly - they were not happy with the information he had to offer (or lack of), especially considering the money they paid.

The second day we were in the area, Elisabeth suggested we go to Lescun for a hike.  This little gem on the French-Spanish border is probably one of the most beautiful places in the area.  After a short drive south from Oloron, you get off the road and drive up a steep and narrow set of switchbacks to a small village.  From that village is a spectacular view of craggy peaks and green meadows.

We started hiking without any real plan about what our final destination would be.  The paths were well worn and we were not concerned about getting lost, so we just started heading towards the peaks.  It was clear that the meadows were heavily grazed by cattle and sheep, and as we began climbing higher we began to see signs warning you not to approach the sheep for danger of being attacked by the Great Pyrenees.

We got to the drainage below the rocky crags and sat down to have a short lunch.  It was well into the afternoon, so we knew that if we wanted to get to the pass we would need to go quickly.  We started climbing the scree slopes, ignoring the comical warning signs scrawled on the rocks next to the path.

 "Estamos muertos hay delante" - We are dead over there!

 

We got to the top, and realized that we were actually at the Spain-France border!  It was pretty funny for us, since we had only been in France for about 24 hours.  We played around; jumping back and forth across the line of the signs.  The whole hike turned out to be spectacular.

Off into Europe a Second Time

After running across Europe to reach our visa interview in time, the brevity of the interview itself seemed offensive.  Nonetheless we were happy to be done with yet another step in the process, and we began to plan our next excursion into Europe.  Of course planning is not really our thing, so we basically just left Madrid with the idea of going to every country we possibly could.  We even had the idea that we might make it to the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, but nothing was certain.  We packed up the car again - this time perfectly experienced in the art of car-living - and headed north towards France. 

This time we decided to stop in Vitoria-Gasteiz to spend one last night in Spain.  After leaving the capital, we immediately began to have trouble with our GPS.  This was not such a huge issue for the short term, but we were pretty concerned how this would affect our navigation later on. 

In Vitoria we stayed with two different men.  The first was a young man named Julen.  He treated us to some lovely tapas when we arrived, but it is really what he did for us the next day that left such strong impressions in our minds.  Because we were having issues with our GPS, we hoped that there might be some shop that could help us with our issue.  Julen was very accommodating and helped us look around a bit.  When we at last gave up our search, we faced yet another fiasco: our phone had gone missing.  If it had not been for Julen, we would never have found it.  By the end of the day, it was very obvious that Julen was exhausted.  Despite this, he was still cheerful and showed no sign of frustration.  He was probably the most helpful couch host we have had.

The second man we stayed with was Patxi.  Patxi had just moved into a big new apartment, and was still furnishing it.  When we arrived he set us up in his spare bedroom, and it immediately felt like we were old friends.  Because of the debacle with the GPS and phone I had not drank sufficient water that day, and I got a cold.  Patxi did not mind though.  He just made us some paella, watched a movie with us, and generally made us feel very at home. (We watched Before Sunrise, which turned out to be a huge influence on my feelings for Vienna).  He did not mind that we needed to stay an extra day for me to get better.  He was a great guy.

Our second trip out into Europe did not get off on a good foot, but we at least got some good memories out of it.  When we left Vitoria to go to the French Pyrenees, we realized that we could actually use the GPS.  The screen did not show the whole image, but enough for us to navigate.  It was in this way that we traveled for months.  Using only half the map and not being able to see what our next turn or exit would be.  It made things exciting.