Journey to Japan✈️✈️

October 9, 2024November 20, 2024 Marie Noonanasia, campervan, japan, osaka, retirement, rural japan, shikoku, tokyo, travel12 Comments

Our journey was longer than expected. We flew Qatar Airlines from Dublin to Doha (Qatar) and onwards to Osaka in Japan but delays leaving Dublin meant that we missed our connecting flight in Doha.

We weren’t the only ones with missed flight connections. The escalating situation and volatile skies over the Middle East meant that lots of flights were delayed, cancelled or diverted. Doha is a big international hub with connecting flights radiating in all directions and that night it was chaotic with hundreds (maybe thousands) of passengers milling around, all wanting to be somewhere else. After queueing for hours at one Transfer Desk, we were moved to another emergency Transfer Desk that was set up in a different part of the airport to cope with the huge numbers of displaced passengers. Finally we were booked on the next available flight to Japan which was in 24 hours. The bad news was that there were no hotels available as the allocation for delayed passengers was already filled. Others fared much worse – people going to Auckland were told that that next available flight for them was in three days.

Qatar Airline staff advised us to try again later for a hotel when other passengers might have checked out and in the meantime we were given a meal voucher so that we could ‘rest and replenish’ in the words of the man at the Transfer Desk. There wasn’t much replenishing as the ‘meal’ voucher was valid for tea/coffee and little else. All sandwiches/rice meals were beyond the price range. The staff in the restaurant were very nice, advising us that the best way to spend our vouchers was to get the ‘specials’ (falafels and soggy chips). They had plenty of experience as the situation had been even more chaotic the night before.

Doha airport is enormous. The shuttle bus from the plane took at least 35 minutes to reach the terminal building. There were people curled up in every corner trying to sleep. Segregated ‘quiet’ rooms were available with recliners. Both of us were lucky enough to grab a recliner in our respective male and female rooms but they weren’t really ‘quiet’. Phones were going off, people were coming and going, there were chatters, snorers, coughers and sneezers. Plenty of smoking rooms were available for the smokers, segregated prayer rooms for the religious but not a bar in sight for the drinkers🥂

At around 6am, we made our bleary-eyed way to join another queue for the service desk and after an hour, we were allocated a hotel room but…. we had to join another queue to get the voucher printed. Then more queues for immigration followed by hanging around for a bus to take us to our hotel where our room wasn’t ready for another two hours.

We were delighted to be out of the airport. There was a faint smell of spices, maybe turmeric, in the hot dry air. After the air-conditioned airport, the 39 degree heat was a shock, a solid, shimmering wall in a flat landscape. Doha looked brand new, as if it was made yesterday with skyscrapers, minarets and new roads rising out of the desert sands.

Our hotel, Hotel Royal Riviera, was much better than we expected, with a spacious bedroom, hot showers and plentiful tasty food, a buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner. There was an absolutely fabulous selection of dessert cakes at lunch and dinner….the most delicious syrupy orange cake that I have ever tasted and superb chocolate brownies topped with roasted pistachios – it was so good that if we are delayed in Doha on the return journey home, I won’t mind.

At about 10.30am, we fell on the hotel bed into a deep sleep for a few hours, waking in a jet lagged stupor to walk to the National Museum of Qatar. White taxis kerb- crawled beside us wanting to take us on a city tour which we kept declining. The museum was a breath-taking building with interlocking disc inspired by the desert rose, a geological phenomenon formed by the deposition of minerals in a circular pattern around sand grains Built on the shores of the Arabian Gulf, the museum was as stunningly beautiful inside as it was outside and is well worth a visit…if you ever find yourself stranded in Doha.

Our flight to Japan departed Doha at the ungodly hour of 1.30am. With a nine-hour flight and a six-hour time difference, we arrived with addled body clocks at 5.30pm into a cloudy Osaka (23C). In contrast to Doha, the airport was calm with orderly queues and much bowing by the courteous staff. We were first fingerprinted, then given a 12 week visitor visa at passport control. After two nights and almost three days, we had arrived.

An efficient train brought us directly from the airport to Namba station in the city centre for about €6. Google maps guided us from there to our hotel, through narrow laneways, over humpbacked bridges crossing the canal and then onto wider streets which felt clean, safe and welcoming. We liked Osaka immediately. The large number of cyclists surprised us, most of them cycling on the footpath. Many had small kids on the back carriers and shopping in the baskets on the front. All pedestrians and cyclists stopped on red lights even if nothing was coming from any direction. This adherence to rules was something that Caoimhin found quite a challenge and it’s entirely possible that we will find out what the sanctions for jaywalking are before we leave.

Our hotel, Be-zen Shimanouchi, was on a small, quiet street and had a big,comfortable futon-bed, both a shower and a bath and an incredible number of complimentary beauty products (even a face mask which was not as rejuvenating as anticipated) all for €64. There was no extra charge for the change of date from the night before which we really appreciated. A guest who had come from Tokyo said that his hotel room here was double the size, twice as nice and half the price.

The following morning, it was time to pick up the campervan from Zen Campers. Our van was exactly as shown online, a beige, ‘no-frills’ van conversion which seemed perfectly adequate for us. Deciding to park it up for the night in the Zen office parking lot for free , we explored Osaka. The city has two main tourist attractions which are very different. One is a crowded street full of towering neon signs and tourist shops, the other is a spectacular five-story fairytale castle with almost 450 years of history.

The atmosphere was tranquil as we strolled in sunshine around the large castle park with gorgeous views of the thick castle walls. There were lots of meandering families, bicycles, stalls selling bonsai plants and a violinist playing near an old bridge over the moat. This was in complete contrast to the madness of Dotonbori. This area was teeming with tourists trying to take photos of flashing billboards, the most famous of the Running Man which has glowed over the area for more than eighty years. We jostled along in the crowds before drinking an overpriced beer in a bar where half the people were smoking inside (that’s a blast from the past).

On the way back to our van we walked through quiet, clean streets. Walking past a woman pushing a stroller, we were surprised to see that there was a robot baby in the stroller. I googled the image from the photo we took and the robot is called a Lovot and can be taught to love you.

Sunday morning dawned bright, sunny and much warmer than we expected for early October with temperatures of 30C. We wanted to leave Osako but we weren’t sure where to go. On a whim we decided to head south towards the island of Shikoku, the smallest of the four main islands in Japan and to leave a visit to historic Kyoto until the end of our trip.

The roads were reasonably busy leaving Osaka but the drivers were courteous. The road signs were in both English lettering and Japanese symbols and best of all, the Japanese drive on the left side on the road, the same as at home. On the highway, one city blended into the next, almost without a pause. There were some long suspension bridges linking islands. Japan is a country of islands and engineering. Although there are only four main islands in Japan, there are hundreds of smaller islands often used as stepping stones to join one with the other. The price for such fantastic infrastructure was pretty hefty tolls (eye-watering at times), some of which could only be paid for with cash or pre-registered toll-cards. It’s essential if you’re even slightly off the beaten track to have some hard cash in your pocket. ATMs are widely available for withdrawing yen Many of the small family restaurants and even the bakery in Osaka only accepted cash.

Soon the cities were behind us and we were looking at the green, tree-clad mountains of Shikoku Island. We headed to Kamiyama because we had heard that it was a rural idyll and because a man from Tramore lived there, the son of a friend of Caoimhin’s and a fellow GiY enthusiast(Grow It Yourself). Manus had set up a small craft brewery in Kamiyama which had won awards and was open on Sundays…..a good enough reason to go in that direction. We found the brewery (Kamiyama Brewery) sampled some really great beers and although Manus wasn’t there, there was a campsite nearby in a glorious setting among tall trees by a river. We parked our van, really delighted to be in Kamiyama.

We met up with Manus the following day at his brewery. He and his wife, Sayaka, a Japanese artist, set up home with their two young children in Kamiyama, a small spread-out town in a valley surrounded by green,forested mountains. It also has an unexpected vibrancy, rural but not sleepily provincial. There was even a bakery selling sourdough baguettes. Manus and Sayaka came about ten years ago to participate in an artist’s hub that was being set up in the town. They were so charmed by the place that they stayed. We could certainly see the appeal.

Manus and Sayaka were so lovely, giving us lots of useful tips for our trip and treating us to lunch at a pop-up restaurant where every Monday, a local organic farmer makes a big pot of curry using her own produce, sets up a table or two outside her house and sells a delicious lunch. The farmer-cook was also funny and charming, and very proud of her home-grown garlic(like Caoimhin). So many Japanese rural towns are dying because of an aging population and a rapidly declining birth rate. Kamiyama is bucking the trend with an influx of younger people looking for a better, more sustainable way of life. Many companies based in Tokyo even have an outreach office in thriving Kamiyama, which has just built a large Polytech school which should encourage more people come and stay in this beautiful area.

The Japanese love their Onsens, hot spring thermal baths which are found all over the country. These are much more than a place to have a good soak, they are part of Japanese culture. There was an onsen down the road by the river from our campsite so we decided to visit. At the entrance, there were many signs in Japanese which we didn’t understand but there was also a drawing of a tattooed torso with a big x through it, informing clients that anyone with tattoos wasn’t welcome. Leaving our shoes in a locker inside the door, we entered a large foyer with a pale-green carpet and a long counter where we paid the entrance fee (about €3) and rented some tiny white towels. I walked through the red curtain for the women’s section while Caoimhin disappeared behind the blue curtain. It was quite intimidating. I wasn’t quite sure what to do although Manus had given us some instructions. It was mid-afternoon, a quiet time at the baths, I was by myself in the large changing room so I couldn’t follow the example of anyone else.

I stripped naked and holding my little white towel (slightly bigger than a handkerchief) i pushed through the swing door into the onsen. The air was hot, humid and slightly steamy , there were two elderly nude women sitting on chairs inside the door, with the tiny white towels folded into a square on their heads. I knew that it was important to wash before going into the baths and that foreigners are often scrutinised to ensure that they give themselves a thorough soaping and that they rinse off the soap properly. A woman covered in soapy suds sat on a stool in front of a mirror and used a spray-hose to rinse her body. Then she filled a small blue plastic basin with water, stood up and threw the contents on the stool and floor a couple of times before waddling towards one of the bubbling baths with the little towel folded on her head. I sat on another small stool and did likewise. The little towel is for wiping yourself down after the bath but etiquette demands that it should never touch the bath water. That’s why it is folded on the head or left on the side of the bath.

The water was hotter than expected when I slid into the bath (no splashing allowed) and it took a while to get used to it but soon I was relaxed…..and very shrivelled.

Kamiyama also has another attraction. It is on the famous Shikoku pilgrimage of the 88 Buddhist temples. This is a circuitous route, about 1200kms long around the island of Shikoku. Pilgrims are very recognisable by their conical hats, white robes and wooden staffs. We had seen a few walking (and hobbling) along the roads. Hopefully in the next week or so, we will visit some of the eighty eight temples either by walking or by campervan and find out more about this ancient pilgrimage

Apologies for such a long post …if you reached this far, thanks for your stamina.

じゃあね。Jāne.

‘Till next time🥰

Colombia – Coffee, Clouds and Condors

March 27, 2024 Marie Noonanclouds, coffee, colombia, hiking, retirement, salento, south America, travel, Trekking5 Comments

If you like to wake up and smell the coffee, then the colourful little Colombian town of Salento set amid green Andean mountains and coffee plantations may be your dream destination. Colombia has a reputation for producing excellent coffee and is the third largest grower of coffee after Brazil and Vietnam, so we were surprised to find that drinking coffee in most of the country was a real disappointment.🤨 I must admit that coffee isn’t really my cup of tea but Caoimhin, a coffee connoisseur, was disgusted with the coffee and even switched to drinking tea, water or some of the delicious fresh fruit juices. The reason for this conundrum? Apparently, all the best coffee is exported, leaving the locals with the dregs and it doesn’t help that Colombians like to stew their coffee for hours (or possibly even days) to produce a dark bitter drink called café tinto. But not so in Salento, which has become a thriving tourist destination for coffee lovers from all over South America and further afield.

It is almost mandatory to do a coffee tour when in the town, tourists piling into dilapidated jeeps to jolt along dirt tracks to some of the numerous coffee farms doted in the picturesque hills. We opted to visit a small organic farm, Finca Don Ellias, which was both fun and educational. All the coffee grown in Colombia is arabica, which grows at between 1000 to 2000m above sea level and gives a smooth taste while the other type of bean, robusta, grows at less than 1000m and generally produces a more bitter drink. We walked among coffee plants, their berries turning from green to ruby red, growing on a steep hillside interspersed with banana, avocado and orange trees. These other trees provide shade, absorb water, and attract flies and pests away from the coffee plants. On Don Ellios’s farm, every process was manual from composting to picking to bean separation to roasting which meant that coffee tours were as important as selling the coffee. Did you know that high roasting is often used with poorer quality bean, making coffee that it stronger and more bitter but lacking in subtle complexity? Of course, climate change is an issue here. The two harvests a year in April/May and October/November which used to be as reliable as clockwork have become problematic with changing weather conditions, the coffee berries ripening haphazardly at different times.

The coffee ceremony which was part of the tour was quite elaborate involving heating cups, slowly adding water which was at 80C (never add boiling water!) to freshly ground coffee placed in a cotton filter known as ‘grandmother’s sock’. After two rounds of slow careful washing and discarding the liquid, our warm cups were filled with rich smooth coffee which smelt gorgeous and tasted pretty good even to my taste buds.

**Our Guide, Fernes, and Ben and Dorien, our trekking companians** (*Waxed Palms in background*)

The other reason to visit Salento is to trek in the stunning Valle of Cocora and the Parque National Los Nevados. We went on a three-day hike with Salento Trekking which started in sunshine with a backdrop of spindly wax palms, the national tree of Colombia and the world’s tallest palm-they can reach sixty meters. Our hiking companions were a lovely young Belgian couple from Antwerp and our ‘English speaking’ guide, Fernes, whose grasp of English was probably worse than our Spanish. Our path took us through jungle with flickering hummingbirds and brightly coloured woodpeckers, up into pine and eucalyptus forest, where the trees groaned and creaked above us as we walked and onwards into cloud forest. We hiked down to the Rio Quindio, and sweated up the other side, crossing and recrossing the same river three times on rickety rope bridges, just a few pieces of wood tied together with a plank or two missing to keep things interesting. Cloud and mist shifted over the mountains in an ever-changing pattern but became denser and damper every afternoon until all views were obscured.

On the second day, we entered the paramo ecosystem, a wildly beautiful area of high-altitude grassland above the tree-line with a host of unique vegetation where the colour palette changed from various greens to honeyed gold. There we found the stunning Frailejones, a shrub that looks like a cactus with a flowering head of miniature sunflowers. Frailejones are extremely slow growing, about a centimeter a year and we were surrounded by plants of all ages but some were at least five hundred years old. We huffed and puffed up to the viewpoint on Cerro Chispas at 4408m and were treated to a vista of cloud and mountain. Then a majestic condor soared overhead with wings spread wide, and almost take our breath away. The beautiful bird symbolises power and grace but also has spiritual significance for the indigenous people who believe that it is the wise grandfather who watches from above, offers protection and regulates the energies of the world.

While the scenery was gorgeous and the various ecosystems were interesting, the fascinating part of trek was staying in the homes of the local people who live in these isolated Andean mountains. On the first night we stayed on a farm at 3500m, Finca Argentina. This simple homestead was merely a few connected windowless sheds where the only light came from some sheets of clear corrugated plastic in the roof. There were horses, pigs, geese, hens and a few sheep but this was an inaccessible place without roads where the way to get in or out was by narrow mule tracks.

Our welcome was lukewarm, and I can honestly say that it was the coldest house I have ever been in, a virtual wind tunnel where it was warmer to sit outside with the animals, a few pigs, hens, dogs and cats. It was the first time that we were cold since our arrival in Colombia despite wearing all the layers that we had been carrying around in our backpacks for two months. We arrived in dense fog, cold and damp, and we stayed that way for the evening although the mists cleared and the beauty of the valley revealed itself. The only warm spot was the cozy kitchen, where firewood was burning in a huge range that also served as the cooker, and music played on a radio but the trekkers were banned from there. The cramped bedroom had no electricity and three double-bed bunks which in theory could sleep twelve but our party of five were the only ones to sleep there on lumpy mattresses that night. In fairness there were plenty of thick blankets on the beds whose questionable laundry history didn’t bother us. Caoimhin, who was wearing shorts(that’s another story), took a blanket and draped it over himself in the house but was told that blankets couldn’t be taken out of the bedroom. Dinner was tasty, vegetable soup followed by rice and veg lentil stew, but portions were meager especially for appetites made ravenous by cold, exercise and mountain air. We were all tucked up in bed by 7.30pm for warmth more than tiredness. When Dorien, the Belgian girl, got up during the night to make her way through the house to the toilet using the eerie light of her phone, she found a scene of carnage outside the bedroom door, guts and feathers and a very satisfied fat cat. I was glad that I didn’t need to use the facilities during the night because I would have probably screamed the place down.

Our second night at another farm, Finca Jordan, could not have been more different. We again arrived at about 4pm in heavy fog which lifted almost immediately. We saw that we were surrounded by mountains, steep walls of grey rock with a waterfall tumbling down and a green field with pigs and hens and an Alsatian dog called Rocky who kept chasing a chicken despite the constant shouting of the woman of the house. There was birdsong and tumbling water and a riot of flowers bedecking the simple house, agapanthus, geraniums, roses, carnations and red-hot pokers. Our quarters were a green and blue shed with an attached bathroom and a shower with hot water…luxury after the previous night.Our host invited us into her kitchen, where we sat on a raised platform with our feet level with the stove. She plied us with coffee, tea and hot chocolate and piled our plates high with more food than we could possibly eat, brimming bowls of lentil and veg soup, rice and sliced avocado and vegetables (all of us were vegetarians). She fried long slices of bananas on her stove, covered them with slabs of her own homemade salty cheese, garnished them with spring onions from the garden. Her husband came in, put on a pair of croc slippers, and helped his wife by slicing a few veg while all the time, she talked without pause. Maybe it was the isolation that made her so chatty or maybe it was just her nature. This finca could also only be accessed by mule track, a four-to-five-hour rough trek down the mountain to get a few basic supplies.

**A cosy mountain kitchen, Finca Jordan**

After an ample breakfast, we headed off downhill from this haven of hospitality in a truly beautiful spot. On the way, Caoimhin got a rare sighting of a puma who stopped and stared at him on the winding stony path about a hundred meters ahead before disappearing into the trees. I got a mere glimpse of eyes and movement but that was all. The hike was very rewarding but as it was billed as a Mountain Wildlife Trek and we had an English-speaking guide, we expected to learn more about the flora and fauna. Unfortunately, our guide was not very knowledgeable, or interested in nature in any language. He just wanted to get the hike over as quickly as possible while we wanted to enjoy the enchanting scenery and spend as long as possible in nature, especially on the third day which was all downhill.

We stayed in two different places in Salento, in Hotel Natura Cocora for a few nights before the trek. This was a lovely rambling place with stunning views, a dusty kilometer and a half uphill from the town where we were welcomed and looked after by the very friendly and talkative Don Hugo, who ran the place almost single-handedly. The cleanliness was a little suspect and the bedroom with its old antique furniture was a little shabby with peeling paint but we loved the friendly atmosphere. When we came back, we stayed in town at a fabulous hostel, Atardecer de Salento with its cats, breezy wooden balcony and proximity to restaurants and bars.

Its a cat’s life at Atardecer de Salento Hostel

After a final coffee in Salento, we were on our way south, a seven-hour bus journey to Popayan, a colonial city of churches and white buildings. Almost as soon as we stepped off the bus in the late afternoon, we were greeted by the smell of greenery, long green palm fronds and the lingering scent of incense. We were too late to see the Palm Sunday processions, but Popayan is very popular during Holy Week, Semana Santa. Colombians flock there for the religious ceremonies, the candle-lit possessions that occur every night during Holy Week and the market stalls that are set up on many of the lanes. On Monday evening, we joined the crowds to watch drumming bands slow- march through the ancient streets followed by numerous wooden platforms of religious icons, carried on the shoulders of men called ‘cargueros.’ The procession was long and slow, following the same route past the many churches in a tradition that has gone on continuously since the sixteenth century. Although there were several thunderstorms in Popayan on Sunday evening and Monday afternoon, the rain held off during the nighttime procession.

**Popayan. the White City, La Ciudad Blanca**

We are about to hop on another bus to take us on a partly-dirt road to San Augustin, another small town in the Andes which is close to some pre-Columbian Archaeological sites and I’m sure that we will find some more Easter traditions.

Felices Pascuas

Gracias por leer esto

Till next time……have fun xx

**A Home in the Mountains – Tranquil Location, Low Maintenance, No Problem with Neighbours**😁

Colombia – Tragedy and Transformation

March 17, 2024 Marie Noonanbogota, colombia, hiking, medellin, retirement, south America, tranformation, travel, Trekking, waterfalls5 Comments

**La Alpujarra Administrative Centre, Medellin** – with a green planted wall to soften the exterior.

Medellin was the most fascinating and interesting city we visited in Colombia. It is also probably the most well-known Colombian city, famous for all the wrong reasons because of the popular Netflix series, Narcos, a story of corruption, violence, and Pablo Escobar.

Two words sum up Medellin – tragedy and transformation. It was once the most dangerous city in the world, topping the tables for the highest rate of murder and kidnappings in the 1980s and 1990’s but now it regarded as the most fashionable Colombian city and the one with the best quality of life, attracting tourists and digital nomads. The city sprawls along a narrow valley and climbs steeply into the surrounding mountains with a near perfect climate, often called the place of Eternal Spring.

The economy of Medellin was founded on coffee, a plant that that was ideally suited to the fertile mountainous hinterland until it was dominated by another plant, the coca plant, which also thrived in the region. Coca leaves have always been grown for small scale local consumption because when the leaves are chewed or brewed into tea, it acts as a mild stimulant which suppresses hunger and fatigue and is helpful in combating altitude sickness. Coca leaves are also the raw product in cocaine production, and this is where the infamous Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel enter the picture. Escobar continues to be a controversial figure to this day, loathed by many but admired by others because of his ‘generosity’ – he gave almost 400 houses to the poor in Medellin. But he was also directly responsible for an estimated 40,000 deaths, unspeakable violence, fear and mayhem.

We did two walking tours of Medellin, one of the downtown area and one of an district, known as Comuna 13. (There are sixteen comunas, or districts in Medellin. Comuna 13 was once the most violent district in the most dangerous city in the world, a place that was off-limits even for people living in neighboring districts. It endured sustained urban warfare and was plagued by fierce battles between guerillas and paramilitaries.

Comuna 13 sprawls upwards on a sheer hillside, a rabbit warren of narrow streets, steep steps, colorful houses and graffitied walls. Now its narrow streets and alleyways are bustling with little cafes, tourists and tour guides but the past was not forgotten. We stood in a basketball court in the centre of the Comuna where many innocent locals were murdered. Our guide told us that the brown-earth area, visible like a gaping wound on the opposite hillside was reputedly a mass grave where many of the Missing from the city were buried.

**Comuna 13 – notice the bare-brown hill opposite**

We were entertained by the break-dancing and hip-hop routines of groups of young local men who would probably have been involved in drugs trade in the ‘bad old days’ instead of performing for tourists. Immersion in arts, music and sport has been one of the pillars in the transformation of Medellin and of course nothing would have been achieved without the desire of the communities to break the cycle of violence.

On a wall in Comuna 13, there was a gorgeous wall mural of a giraffe which our guide said represented the strength and resilience of the people because the giraffe has the stoutest heart of any animal relative to its size.

But how did Medellin become this beacon of hope and renewal? There is no simple answer but this remarkable transformation has included the demobilization of guerilla groups, major policy changes, the addition of social programs, and serious infrastructure investments. Our guide on the walking tour of the downtown area credited social work combined with urban architecture turning negatives spaces into positive, accessible libraries and a redefinition of education. Places that were a no-go area when he was a teenager (he was 42) have become convivial locations of relaxation and pride with tree planting, play-areas for children, lots of seating attracting coffee-drinkers, shoe-shine boys and buskers. The Parque de las Luces was once a very dangerous area but now 300 illuminated pillars stand in the space, providing shade by day and light by night. Of course, everything isn’t perfect. The lights in the Park of Light (Parque de las Luces) were turned off last year for maintenance and still haven’t been turned on😲🕯️🕯️

One of the most famous sons of Medellin (apart from the obvious one already mentioned) is the artist and sculptor, Fernando Botero, whose distinctive work is very much in evidence around the city especially in Botero Plaza where twenty- three of his sculptures are on display.

One of the surprises about Medellin was its fantastic public transport system which made travelling around the city so easy. There was a clean efficient modern metro system that was integrated with the bus system and the tramline. There were and cable cars, a gondola lift system that traversed the steep hills called Metro-Cable. The locals were very proud of their Metro system, the only one in Colombia. Although it was about twenty years old, it looks as pristine as the day it was introduced with no graffiti, broken seats or even rubbish. (The lack of rubbish was especially remarkable, as Colombians in general will fling their waster with wild abandon everywhere). We got conflicting answers when we asked about the cleanliness of the Metro, one person told us that it was civic pride that kept it in such good condition, another said it was because there were hefty fines for littering. Whether the approach was carrot, stick or a mixture of both, it was regularly cleaned and was a pleasure to use. We spent a couple of hours one afternoon just riding up and down on the cable-cars and getting a bird’s eye view of the city.

And to really complete our enjoyment of Medellin, we found a fantastic vegetarian restaurant, Saludpan, which had European standards but at Colombian prices. This was probably the best vegetarian restaurant we have ever visited anywhere. While it was primarily vegetarian, it had vegan options and some fish and meat choices. If you ever lucky enough to find yourself in Medellin, I’d highly recommend eating at Saludpan. We ate there each evening on our three nights in the city, breaking our own rule of never returning to the same place.

The popularity of Medellin and its agreeable climate has led to a large influx of Digital Nomads which some are calling a new wave of colonization, a soft invasion by people with computers and money. Although welcomed by most, the influx is changing the city and driving up rents for apartments in certain areas beyond the means of locals.

Emigration was a fact of life for many Colombians for many years so the problem of mass immigration, particularly of Venezuelans who have come in huge numbers because of their domestic troubles, is a new phenomenon. Ironically, many Colombians fled to Venezuela during the dark period in their own relatively recent history so there is a strong feeling of brotherhood between the two countries. The Colombian government in 2021 introduced a 10 -year visa for Venezuelans which gives them access to education and employment.

One of the most perplexing things we heard in Medellin was that the amount of cocaine exported from Columbia last year was three times more than it was in any year during the violent eighties and nineties. We had seen the fallow fields in Northern Colombia where once coca plants were grown and thought that this was the case in the rest of Colombia but this was in indigenous land where the Elders was strong in their opposition to coca and the drug trade. The illegal growing coca is still the backbone of many rural economies in other parts, it is lucrative, easy to grow and can produce three to four crops a year. The cartels have been disbanded and the processing and distribution have moved out of Colombia, some to neighboring Ecuador which has seen an eruption of violence this year. The situation is complex but it seems that the drug trade is alive and well in Colombia.

Guatapé, a small town about two hours east of Medellin, was probably the most colorful town we have ever seen. Everything was painted in bright colours and embellished with drawings and artistic designs. The town was on the edge of a man-made lake acting as a reservoir and was overlooked by a huge dome of granite, a landmark for miles around. This rock, called the Piedra del Penol, had an inbuilt staircase of 700 steps which was well worth the puffing for the rewarding views of the surrounding countryside, green lake-water, pine-clad islands and red soil.

**Guatape – where even the tuk-tuks are brightly coloured.**

The days in Guatapé were warm and overcast but it rained heavily at night turning the road outside our accommodation into a sticky red mess.

A 6-hour bus-ride on two separate buses took us through the Andes with steep drops, twisty roads, trees and flowers until we arrived to the little town of Jardin. This quiet place was nestled in the mountains amid small coffee plantations, banana trees, rivers, waterfalls and grazing cattle. The town was also brightly painted with a large flower-filled plaza and an enormous neo-Gothic church. Although there were some tourists, it had a lovely laid-back feel. We stayed in a hostel, an uphill kilometer out of town where we were woken every morning by birds knocking at the mirrored glass on our balcony door.

We wandered around the hills and spent a glorious day chasing waterfalls on the Siete Cascadas Hike (Seven Waterfalls), a loop hike with a guide. It was challenging at times with ropes required to haul ourselves up and down some of the steep slippery slopes. It was worth every second for the tranquility, the bird song and the beauty of the waterfalls that sometimes gushed and sometimes rippled over green-mossy cliffs.

Lunch came wrapped in a banana leaf with some twine – rice and veg, potatoes and yucca, boiled egg and a veggie patty plus some fried banana. An enormous feast that slowed us our bodies down as we so busy digesting.

We have our bus-tickets booked for our next journey on Monday, a seven-hour trip south through the mountains to Salento and more coffee, where we have already organized t a three-day hike. We are not usually this organized but we are conscious of our dwindling days in this fascinating country.

Muchas gracias por leer

Feliz Dia de San Patricio☘️ Beannachtai na Feile Padraig☘️

Enjoy Paddy’s Day ,💚☘️☘️☘️xx

**Where there’s food, there’s a dog……..**

Camino del Faro- The Lighthouse Way

September 17, 2023September 17, 2023 Marie NoonanCamino, Galicia, hiking, lighthouses, retirement, spain, Trekking7 Comments

Mention the words ‘Camino’ and ‘Spain’ in the same sentence and most people will think about the Camino de Santiago, the incredibly popular pilgrimage way of St James. But there are others far less trodden paths🥾. We have just completed the spectacular Camino del Faro (The Lighthouse Way), a 200 Kms trek in Galicia along the Coste del Morte (Death Coast), linking the towns of Malpica and Finisterre and walking from lighthouse to lighthouse.

Our journey began with a late Ryanair flight from Dublin to Santiago de Compostela, arriving at about 11.30pm. Yellow bus signs on the ground at the airport Arrivals directed us to a bus stop outside the terminal where the 6A took us to the centre of town in about 35 minutes for one euro😃. The streets were quiet and shuttered and a couple that we saw in the airport queue, followed us to the same hotel, Hotel Windsor, a no-frills place but very clean, very central with loads of hot water.

The following morning we discovered that the buses to Malpica, our starting point, were infrequent with just two buses a day…we had missed the first one and the next one was at 1pm. We wandered around the Cathedral area which was crowded with tourists, walkers, pilgrims and the ubiquitous shells from jewelry to tablecloths to masonry etchings – pilgrimage is big business in this part of the world. Confessions were available in multiple languages but few were availing of the opportunity.

Getting to Malpica involved a change of bus at Carballo but both buses were comfortable, efficient and cheap with the two and a half hour journey costing less than a fiver each and we paid the drivers on the buses. Malpica was a surprise…a really gorgeous little town that we had never heard of until we investigated this trek, with a prom that curved around s turquoise bay. We booked into JB Hostal with a large sunny seaview room, 55 euros a night. (In Spain, hostals are guesthouses, different to hostels with dormitories). The seafront was teeming with surfers and little cafes with cold beer and good wine🥂. The beach was dangerous for swimming so we wandered down to the pretty port area to find the start point of our camino. This first lighthouse was a disappointment…hardly visible and behind a big seawall with a No Trespassing Sign (in Spanish) – very little English spoken or understood here.

It was barely light when we crept out of our guesthouse at 7.45am without breakfast(not included). We were smothered in sunscreen,dressed in shorts and carrying all our belongings on our backs. Apart from a few dog walkers, the whole town seemed to be sleeping. We passed a holy well, pristine white-sand beaches and a church on a cliff, stark against a backdrop of barbie- pink heathers. We walked to the incessant sound of the restless sea, relatively benign and blue on this gorgeous early September. day. The first restaurant we came too -after 3 hours walking – was closed until 1pm. Although we had some stomach rumblings, we pushed on as we didn’t want to hang around for 2 hours until it opened. We didn’t know then that we wouldn’t find another one😬

There were chest high ferns and boulders like giant marbles to clamber over in search of the green dot, which denoted our path but which was sometimes quite elusive🟢. At a little port area where we sat to have a meagre snack of nuts and bananas, a light drizzle started, welcome and cooling at first until it got heavier and became a drenching deluge. There was neither shade nor shelter. The wind howled around Nariga Lighthouse, tossing rain and foam at us from all directions. We trudged along like drowned rats until we reached Ninons Beach, a secluded remote beach and the end of Day 1. We hadn’t any accommodation booked, assuming that we would find something along the way but the coast was isolated…we didn’t meet a soul that first day in 22 Kms of hiking. We decided to call a taxi to take us back to Malpica. That’s when we discovered that there was no signal in Ninons😁 so we squelched another kilometer uphill to make the call. The phone signal kept dropping but a taxi materialized out of the rain…like an apparition because Caoimhin wasn’t sure that he had got the message through. Back in Malpica, our shoes were sodden and everything we were wearing dripped a muddy trail up the stairs. Although we had rain covers for our backpacks, we discovered that everything in them was also wet. But after a hot shower, the sun came out, the outside tables were wiped down, the wine was still cheap and I ate a basket of bread and probably the best mussels I have ever tasted😍.

Day 2 started with wet shoes and damp clothes. We had bought a lavender spray in the Chino shop to mask the stench of damp but it was so synthetic that it smelt almost toxic. Our taxi dropped us back to Ninos Beach where we climbed through gorgeous eucalyptus forests (their scent wasn’t strong enough to mask the lavender 😏). Shining granite rock shimmered in the sunshine along this walk to Ponteceso with many diverse landscapes from rocky cliffs, salt marsh, sand dunes and river estuary, a haven for birds. This stage was beautiful but long (almost 27 Kms). When we came to the seaside town of Corme at the 17kms mark, we were ready for a break.The first place didn’t do food until evening time so we had a cold beer and moved on to another establishment where we ate fish salad and patatas bravas. Although the sun was hot and relentless for the last stage we still managed to get wet feet, walking on boardwalks submerged by the incoming tide along the estuary.

When we reached the hostel, my feet were shriveled and blistered, I had a welt on my hand from clutching the walking stick and an ache across my shoulders from the backpack. This Camino began to feel like a pilgrimage of sorts. In a local bar, the friendly owner insisted on plying us with free tapas which we were almost too exhausted to eat. But things improved from this point and day 2 of multi-day hikes is well- known to be the tough one.

We discovered that socks could be dried very effectively by wrapping them around a hairdryer sprout ( if you were fortunate enough to have access to a hairdryer) and stuffing shoes with old newspapers(periodicos viejos) helped a lot. Comped plasters and Vaseline were a balm for feet and a hotel in Laxe with a bath worked magict to ease tired muscles. The hikes became easier as our bodies – and minds- adjusted. We carried food supplies, pockets stuffed with bread and cheese, a supply of biscuits, bananas, nuts and chocolate and an emergency can of sardines. Most days the only people we saw were solitary locals, clambering over rocks far below us, splashed with foaming water, gathering gooseneck barnacles from the heavily oxygenated waters – a treacherous occupation. We always trekked in hope of a cafe. A local woman, who was hanging out her washing, offered us life-saving coffee when we were disappointed yet again that a cafe/bakery marked on our map was closed. This lovely woman filled our water bottles and even offered us beer and food. Wonderful hospitality.

Sometimes our Camino veered inland where we walked through woodland to the sound of birdsong, hiked by streams where old water mills were covered in moss and past high villages where stone houses looked abandoned surrounded by fields of withering corn and orchards of dripping fruit. But mainly our path hugged the coast faithfully, often just a narrow ribbon clinging to steep cliffs with dizzying drops.

The Costa del Morte is not called the Death Coast for nothing. The coast was littered with stone crosses, bargains made with the heavens or erected as platitudes to the sea, or places to remember the dead. There were tales of shipwrecks, drownings, smugglers and pirates. On a lonely headland, the doomed victims of ill-fated ships were buried in a place called the English Graveyard. A stunning sculpture near the Lake Lighthouse of a woman gazing out to sea, captured the anxiety and agony of waiting. An isolated church on a hilltop was a place where local women used to go in times of storm to pray for a change of wind to bring their men home.

As we hiked further west, the coast became wilder and even more remote. On our fifth day, after days of sunshine, the forecast was bad and didn’t disappoint. The cold blue-green of the sea, mesmerizing and dangerous, turned an ominous gray. We watched two surfers paddling on their boards out to churning waves that crashed on jagged rocks and marveled at their stupidity -so small and insignificant. Even the seagulls were sheltering from the elements, hunkering down on the beaches. The wind became ferocious, the rain came at us sideways and we could barely stand upright but we got a tiny glimpse of what this coast might be like in bad weather and it was awe-inspiring.

After six days walking, we arrived in Muxia, a pretty little town with safe beaches, a lighthouse and a place of legends. It was here that the Virgin Mary arrived in a stone boat to encourage Saint James to continue in his work. Large stones near the church were reputed to be part of Mary’s boat and to have magical properties.The Barco festival was starting the following day so we decided to take a rest day and stay an extra night. Muxia is on the Camino de Santiago so was busier than anywhere else we stayed. We discovered that Spanish festivals only get going around midnight and continue until at least 5am and nobody even thinks of eating until 10pm. Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay awake for much of the festivities🥳. Muxia was badly affected by The Prestige disaster in 2002, which leaked thousands of litres of crude oil into the sea all along the coast here.

Although it hardly seemed possible, the scenery got even more spectacular as the days progressed. The penultimate day was the ‘queen of the mountain stage’ with steep climbs and stupendous views. We trekked to Tourinan Lighthouse, which was supposedly the most westerly point in Europe and got the last rays of sunlight in the Spring Equinox. On the eighth and final day, it almost felt as if we were in the landscape, part of it and not just looking at it, at one with the sea and the wind (or maybe that was just exhaustion or relief with our end goal within reach 🙏).

Fisterre, the end of the known world for the Romans, was a strange little town, full of weathered people with walking sticks, limps and flip flops. It was the endpoint for pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago as well so it didn’t have to try very hard to attract visitors. But the landscape around the Finisterre lighthouse, a couple of kilometers hike outside the town, was worth the entire Camino, a fitting place to finish. This was a wild landscape of mysticism, of drowned cities and submerged mountains, of altars to the sun and timeless rituals with tales of sterile couple becoming fertile after sleeping on one of the large rocks on the hill overlooking the sea and healing miracles.

So we made it, 200kms in eight stages. We carried out own packs and booked our accommodation as we went along, usually walking from stage to stage but getting taxis to our accommodation if we couldn’t find anything near the end stage. The Camino del Faros was probably the most spectacular hike that we have ever done. It was quite challenging at times (more than we had anticipated but we hadn’t done a lot of training). Each day on its own would not have been difficult but the cumulative nature of hiking relatively long distances day after day exerted a toll. The bigger the challenge, the greater the reward 🌞 and the rewards were huge. There were no stamps to collect in a pilgrimage passport, nothing to ‘prove’ that we had trekked along the way. The benefits of this Camino were all internal – solitude, genuine communing with nature and an appreciation and respect for the power of the sea -to mould and erode, to give bounty and to take it away. If you like the great outdoors, like to go a little off the beaten track, then this is the hike for you.

Link below to a fabulous website with lots of details.

O Camiño dos Faros

Philippines- The Lost Week

April 13, 2023April 13, 2023 Marie Noonanbeaches, island hopping, islands, Palawan, Philippines, retirement, sunshine8 Comments

There’s a reason why some places are so popular. The Philippines is so astonishingly beautiful that we had almost become jaded to beauty, but our first glimpse of the Bacuit Archipelago still managed to take our breath away. We were squashed in a little white van, whose speedometer didn’t work and the driver was cautious on the hills when we saw a dreamy landscape of islands spread before us through the rain splattered, dirt splotched windscreen. It was just a tantalising glimpse through a break in the trees. It reminded me of island-studded Clew Bay, another dreamy landscape, when viewed from the top of Crough Patrick on a mist-shrouded day.

El Nido, the main town for trips around the islands, was everything that people had said – busy with people, traffic and incredibly noisy. Houses, restaurants and bars were built almost directly on the water and obscured all views of the beach from the crowded streets. But it was backed by hulking limestone cliffs, iron grey except where trees and shrubs had taken root on the bare rock. You just have to admire the tenacity of trees to survive and expand. El Nido, which is Spanish for ‘nest’, got its name from the little birds – swifelets- who build their edible nests made from saliva in the limestone karsts.

When we walked from the street through a narrow passageway (one person wide), there were a hundred tour boats bobbing in the shallow water and hundreds of tiny birds flying overhead, ducking, diving and soaring over the surface of the water. The islands were a constant presence from the waterfront, towering limestone rocks casting shadows in the jade water, the distant ones shrouded in a blue haze. Splashes of green on the islands where trees were growing out of the bare rock on them without any obvious soil.

Practically everyone who comes to El Nido, does a tour of the islands. Most tours cost between €20 and €30 for a full day including a sumptuous lunch of seafood, grilled fish, chicken, noodles, rice, salads and fruit. Tourism here was a conveyer belt – we were hustled from our accommodation to the beach where hundreds of tourists were being directed to rent snorkelling gear and then shepherded onto the bobbing boats. Organised chaos …..a scene repeated every morning with a fresh batch of tourists like Groundhog Day. We were separated from our group and sent to another boat because our designated boat was overcrowded. So we were surrounded by Filipinos in holiday mode, who were from the south of Palawan and were on a work outing, courtesy of their employer. Three cooks toiled away at the back of at the boat all morning cooking our lunch on charcoal coals, sweat and heat but delicious smells. As all the tour boats left at 9 am and as they basically followed the same route, it was busy of some of the sights, like the Big Lagoon where we kayaked by towering limestone cliffs, the Hidden Beach (not so hidden anymore). The variety of fish and coral was stunning but there were jellyfish floating there too- not the dangerous kind but enough to pack a mighty tingle – Caoimhin and I can testify to that as both of us got stung.

But then the unthinkable happened- both Caoimhin and I got seawater in our phones. It was the last stop in the Secret Beach and Hidden Lagoon – one of the most iconic images in the Philippines and the place that is on the cover of the Lonely Planet Guidebook. We waded ashore in waist-to-chest deep water and had to climb through a hole in the rock into a ‘hidden’ lagoon, We brought our phones from the boat in clear plastic waterproof pouches but we had to take them out of the pouches to take photos. Caoimhin was really enthusiastic about the fabulous photos he was taking. Anyway some water got into the pouches – we put the phones back into the pouches and although I realised almost immediately……it looked like it was too late. The same thing happened to a French guy in the place where we are staying and several other people along the way.

When we went to buy rice from a shop keeper in town who was selling several kinds, his first query was about the size of our phones. No tourist ever bought rice to cook. So the phones went into a bag of rice for three days which is the optimal time needed to dry them out thoroughly. Caoimhin had already researched recovery of a water-damaged phone(due to a phone falling into a hot pool in Albania). At this stage, we were reasonably optimistic…we would never be so unlucky to lose two phones on the same day, would we?? It would be liberating to be without phones for a few days. We would have to ask directions, look at paper maps, take mental pictures of the scenery and not look at everything through the lens of a phone camera. How refreshing!

We rented motorbikes and moved south from El Nido town…..with our phones snuggled in rice….. to a place that couldn’t be more different from touristy El Nido although the views of the Bacuit Peninsula were equally stunning. Bebeladan was small dusty fishing village – the last three kilometres were on unpaved roads and probably the bumpiest, most pot-holed piece of dirt track we had been on. There were no restaurants, bars or even much electricity. It was like going back in time…people living in bamboo shacks with thatch or corrugated roofs, earthen floors. Every second shack was a shop, selling the usual sachets of washing powder, soaps, sweets with a few veg and fruit. Solar panels provided light but there was no aircon or even fridges (really difficult especially when the weather was in the early to mid-thirties). Our accommodation -called Mountainside – was perched in the hill overlooking the village with about a hundred steps leading down. The views from our balcony were sublime – that dreamy landscape again, changing subtly with tide and light and cloud.

There was a pet monkey chained up outside on a long leash who could reach the edge of our balcony where he begged for food as soon as he saw us. It seemed so cruel to have him chained up all the time but our landlady said that she had inherited him from her uncle. When she tried to let him go free in the forest on an island, he swam after their boat, screaming to go back with them. Our landlady, Christine, was a young woman from Cebu with a Polish boyfriend and a 4 month old baby. She cooked breakfast (fried eggs and garlic rice) for us most mornings and dinner as well (usually rice and vegetables) but her star dish was a squash stewed in coconut milk and spices. Most couples running guesthouses are European men with Filipino girlfriends. The men provide the money for the purchase of the property but it is in the girlfriends name.

🐵Feeding time🐒🐒

We were back in the land of the rooster, crowing all day and night. We had just missed a big cock-fighting event as part of a festival in the village by about two days – maybe the roosters left had something to crow about. We walked in the early morning in the hills outside the village where children waved to us but the houses were even more basic, ramshackle and fragile with a few chickens and usually a pig tied up outside, a couple of coconut and banana trees for shade. Cold is never a problem so an ‘airy’ house is a good thing to keep things cool but this is a land that gets a lot of rain and is lashed by typhoons for potentially six months of the year.

We took a boat tour to the islands from the village as well, just a dugout canoe, the two of us and a boatman wearing worn shorts, not many teeth and even fewer English words. But he took us to a small island called the Cathedral, a cave with soaring limestone columns and holes in the rock that let the light filter in like stained-glass windows, something majestic about it that made us talk in whispers even though as we had the place to ourselves. Our boatman kept asking ‘You want photo?’ although we kept telling him that we had no phones. Tourists without cameras were an anomaly he couldn’t understand.

On Snake Island, the colours of the water were truly amazing, ranging from turquoise to azure to cobalt blue. The island gets its name not from the number of snakes on the island but because a shallow sandy path -walkable at low tide – curved to shore in the shape of a snake. Truly Instagram-able, if you had a camera, from the high vantage point on the island.

We delayed checking the phones, living in that zone of hope as long as possible. We tried mine first and although it made some faint buzzing, it was death throes and it refused to charge. Caoimhin’s was next and when his took some charge, hope soared but then was dashed again when it refused to start. We tried the following day again….and the next day….the liberation of not having phones had worn off. It’s incredible how reliant on the phones we have become, especially when travelling – we use them for booking accommodation, google maps so that we know where we are, transferring money and keeping track of our finances(we can’t even check what’s in our Revolut and N26 accounts),WhatsApp to keep in contact, writing the blog……but they are also a camera, a torchlight, a calculator. Caoimhin reads on the Kindle app on the phone (I have my Kindle with me). He had also downloaded yoga workouts and Spanish lessons on his phone which were inaccessible without it.

We had the laptop at least – which we hadn’t been using much because the Wi-Fi in most places wasn’t strong enough to connect. Ironically, the place we are staying in the village had reasonable Wi-Fi but it didn’t have any sockets so we couldn’t charge the laptop….not much electricity in the village. One enterprising couple had extra solar panels on their roof that powered a whole bank of sockets. In a shack similar to most of the others, a woman, with a kind face and greying hair, watched over a whole bank of phones and laptops as they charged for a small fee.

We tried one more last ditch effort on the phones. We returned To El Nido town on the motorbike and called in to one of the many phone repair shops. If anyone could fix it, there boys could with their vast experience of submerged phones but after a half an hour of cleaning and scraping, they shook their heads. Despite the Easter season, there was no resurrection for our phones. So we bought the best cheapest phones we could find to tide us over and moved north of El Nido to Bucana to a beach-hut which was tranquil, apart from the waves that pounded all night and sounded like they might engulf the hut. It was the sort of place where people took their pigs for a morning walk on the beach and the local children tried on our sunglasses and hats. It was also the sort of place where the Wi-Fi was poor and setting up new phones was almost impossible. On Easter Sunday, we wandered up to the Chapel with the glorious singing from the young choir pulling us in that direction and shared a melted Lindt chocolate bar that I had bought in El Nido.

We are now in Coron on Busuanga Island where finally we have electricity, Wi Fi and working phones. We took a five hour ferry from El Nido town on Monday, which was fast, comfortable, and uncrowded. We sat with a friendly Filipino couple who lived in New Zealand now. The boat captain allowed the 4 of us on deck – an exhilarating experience as there was a sheer drop with no safety barrier to get out.

Coron town was a disappointment, noisy, polluted with no beaches. The temperatures have been creeping higher here in April, it was about 30 degrees but now mid -thirties……even the locals collapse in the shade in the deadness of early afternoons. In Coron, we have had clammy overcast days with high humidity and the threat of thunderstorms that never arrive. If Coron town was a disappointment, the island of Coron, a 30 minute boat-ride away, was incredible with deep lakes, towering jagged cliffs, white sand beaches – a dramatic landscape that should be the movie backdrop to epic tales. Coran town was horrible, but we stayed in a tranquil oasis, Divine Castle, on a quiet street away from the mayhem of the main street. It had hot showers and cold drinking water and aircon. We got a free room upgrade and negotiated a price for two extra nights and got a room with a view of the town, the boats, and Coron Island.

Our next stop is Manila. We leave tonight on a 17-hour ferry, fingers crossed that it’s better than our previous long-distance ferry experience😁

Thanks for reading…..till next time, greetings from the sweltering tropics. Apologies – this post is longer than usual without photos to paint a thousand words 🤣

Moving in

September 13, 2021 Marie Noonanhistory, retirement, spain, travel9 Comments

It was time to move inland – it was already August 27 – and make our way to the other side of Spain to Catalonia where we had rented a holiday house with Ciaran and Christina, Caoimhin’s brother and wife and Louise, a South African friend of theirs for most of September.

The morning in Galicia was grey and hazy – sea and sky were one – unlike the vivid blues and greens that we were used to and the temperature was a cool (almost goose bumpy) 18 degrees. We packed up the tent and decided to head inland. We stopped in Lugo to look at the impressive Roman walls. We climbed the steps and walked the 2 kms on top of the walls. It would have been a lovely walk at dusk or early morning but at 1 pm in 33 degrees, it was a walk for mad dogs only…..

**Climbing the walls – Roman Walls, Lugo**

Afterwards while we were hydrating indoors in an air con café in the old town with good WiFi, we decided to give the camping a break. We booked a hostal there and then in Ponteferrada, a town about an hour and a bit away. (Hostals are different to hostels, they are cheap hotels usually two star).It was €50 for an en-suite room including breakfast and free parking so we weren’t sure what to expect. Hostal Rabel didn’t look very promising from the street and was over a little cafe/bar. But we were very pleasantly surprised – it was spotlessly clean inside with thick shutter blinds, crisp white sheets, bedside lamps (a luxury after camping) and wooden floors. It was bliss -cool and quiet with a fantastic shower and oodles of hot water and even complimentary toiletries. It was only a short walk from the old town. and there was even a good vegan restaurant (La Marmita Verde) up the street – we were the only customers in this meat obsessed country.

Ponteferrada is a medium sized town in the province of Leon surrounded by mountains and was a major stop for centuries on the French Camino. The old quarter of the town sits below a very imposing castle built by the Knights Templar near the iron bridge crossing the river Sil to protect passing pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. There were also several churches in the old town. We popped into the Basilica de la Encina where Gregorian chant music was being piped and were awed by the beauty of the building, the ornateness of the decor and the music. The building exuded power. It was actually spine tingling – the pilgrims who walked this route for salvation must have felt the urge to prostate themselves on the ground.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is img_20210828_091304.jpg — **Bascilica de la Encina, Pontferrada**

**The Castle of the Knights Templar, Ponteferrada** (and the big ‘M’ – One chain to another))

After our very pleasant stop in Ponteferrada, we headed southeast and drove for a couple of hours over dry flat landscape under a baking sun until we got to Tordesillas, a little town with a campsite that had good reviews online. The town didn’t look like much, the camping cost almost as much as our stay in the hostal the night before (€44)and had lots of rules, it was hot and dusty and as we pitched our tent, sweating in the dirt, we were regretting our decision to go there. But that changed when we crossed the bridge over the Douro and climbed the cobble streets of the old town. We had no hint of the treasures waiting up the hill – convents, monasteries, a palace going back to the twelfth century and a beautiful town square. Heat radiated from the stone walls but there was also a cooling breeze and birdsong, hundreds of doves and pigeons flying and an evening wedding in one of the old churches. We people-watched under the vaulted arches of the Square and drank cold beer in the shade. It was like walking through history and what history here – google the Treaty of Tordesillas where the American continent (most yet to be discovered at the time) was carved up between Portugal and Castille to avoid war on the Iberian Peninsula.. And the story of Joan the Mad, daughter of Isabel and Ferdinand who was banished here….who wasn’t ‘mad’ at all.

After a morning walk along the Douro under the shade of poplar trees, we drove off still heading east along the fertile Douro valley with its vineyards in the direction of Siguenza where we had booked a parador a few days previously for Monday night. It was now Sunday and we weren’t sure where we would break the journey or if we would camp overnight. We kept driving until we arrived in Atienza, a small village in Guadalajara with a ruined castle on the hilltop overlooking the village and knocked on the stout wooden door of Hotel Convento Santo Ana, a door that looked like it had admitted travelers for centuries. There were rooms available for €49 a night and we were stunned both by the price and by the beauty of the interior design, all muted colours with large sofas and lamps. Incredible value in a beautiful place. We wandered up to the village square where at 7.30 pm, we are too early for dinner anywhere ( a common problem as most restaurants don’t open until 9 pm) and make do with tapas, olives, bread, tortilla, crisps and wine.

**Hotel Conventa de Santa Ana, Atienza** – **incredible value**

Early the following morning, the smell of baking bread from the village bakery followed us up the hill to the ruins of the castle on the rock, once a very important seat of power and the interface between Christians and Muslims, frequently changing hands between the two. Atienza was part of the Ruta de El Cid (and even Don Quixote)but is now a mere hamlet of a couple of hundred people

Then it was onward to Siguenza and luxury at the Parador of Siguenza, the Castle of the Bishops, a medieval castle with foundations dating back to the fifth century. Paradores are a group of historical buildings that are state owned and run as upmarket hotels at affordable prices. How could we resist staying in a castle for €140 for the night including a fabulous buffet breakfast? Siguenza is a beautiful little town with a stunning cathedral, narrow cobbled streets where the walls store up the heat of the day and release it in the balmy evening, where the barber was an ex-matador and the walls of his shop were covered with triumphant photos of himself in his heyday and the TV was tuned to some bullfighting event. But he did an excellent job of cutting Caoimhin’s hair. As we creep down the staircase for an early morning walk, the following day we notice lots of birds flying past a window at the end of one of the long corridors. We investigated and opened the window to see thousands of little swallows clinging to the castle walls like leaves and then flying off and landing again. It was a truly remarkable sight.

After the luxury of the parador, we come down to earth with a bang. A deer rant out in front of he car and we missed him by a hair’s breath. We had seen some deer in the long pale grasses beneath the castle walls but this was a closer encounter than we wanted. The amount of truck traffic after Zaragoza is incredible – trucks outnumber cars at least ten to one. We cross the border into Catalonia and camp at the Riba Roja campsite which has a disheveled air, dusty and wilted by the heat and with lots of flies. But there were no rules here about where to park or pitch your tent or wash your dishes which is refreshing. It was on the banks of a reservoir made by the impressive dam on the river Ebro for the Riba Roja hydroelectric plant. But there were also thunderstorm warnings and the access road to the campsite was along a narrow road cut into high cliffs which made us (I mean me!) a bit nervous. The pitter- patter of rain on the tent in the early morning had us scrambling to pack up. But the rain which was very light stopped almost as soon as it began so we walked up the road to have a look at the dam and the hydroelectric plant and heading to the Costa Duarada.

Travelling across Spain through the interior has been a revelation – we picked our stopovers at random and without research and could easily have stayed in different places but we were completely awed by the living history, beauty of the old towns and the quality of the accommodation. We traveled all the way on non-toll roads and thankfully no car issues to report!!

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