Day: April 19, 2024
There must be a pony in here somewhere
They seem to have a lot of ponies in Basque country. We saw several and remember seeing them in 2018.
I never really knew what a pony was exactly. I did some searching. They are different than horses but of the same species, like dog breeds apparently.
Safer road walking
Charlie started this post but I (Wynette) will finish it. We were doing some road walking (albeit quite safe since very few cars came by on this tiny country road) and I thought, why not put on our high-viz gear? Can’t hurt to be a little more visible. I did not succeed in talking Charlie into donning his.
My mom helped me make these little hi-viz skirts before we left. She sewed the little edge for inserting elastic around the long edge. Thanks, Mom!
We didn’t bring these for sunny day road walking but for putting over our dark blue raincoats on dark rainy days should we have to walk along a busy road in those conditions. So far, we haven’t needed them for that.
We have heard that one can get fined in Spain if walking on highways without wearing something like a hi-viz vest. We’ve walked many miles on Spanish roads without one and no fines yet. But, we do have reflective tape on our backpacks and on my hiking poles.
4/19 WynChar Diary
Miles walked: 8.6 pretty much completely flat, a first, and welcome. Wynette didn’t use her hiking poles at all, also a first.
Foolhardy climbs attempted: 0, down from 1 in 2018.
Mexican food dishes eaten: 1 (chicken enchiladas, at the hotel/restaurant where we are staying)
As you can see, it wasn’t a very exciting day. But we enjoyed it.
Joan Didion look alike
Our hotel tonight has lots of interesting art and objects. This is one.
El Brusco!! No!!
El Brusco is a steep hill along the trail today. We climbed it in 2018. Beautiful views, super steep, both up and down. You can check out our 2018 for photos. But we were still in our 60s then. This time it was “How could we have been so stupid as to try that?” and we went around. Here is the track and elevations. El Brusco is the big spike in the elevation map.
And here we are today, satellite view. We are the blue dot, walking the beautiful beach and being glad we didn’t have to climb El Brusco to get to the next beach.
When we got to the end of the beach we turned left. Missed the beach on the other side of El Brusco. All the rest of our walk today was inland.