Paseito, redefined.

In all fairness, I will start by saying that C did tell me that this was not a “paseito” and that it would be a pretty tough climb. That being said…

We left the house at 7:30am and didn’t get back until midnight. We hiked/walked for some 11 hours plus, 20-something kilometers and climbed about 4200 feet, here (that’s just a link to pictures, but there’s some map pictures in there too).

This is how we started. An hour and a half of…”ummmm, but maybe we start this way?” and “I think it’s this way” and “Well, what did the website say?”

And then this. His arms say it all, no? Snicker, snicker.

And there was some cell phone checking. And a little chatter with a guy passing by on a bike. Anyhoo, you get the picture…

Aaaaaand then we got moving. It was a pretty steep climb through all kinds of terrain, muddy, rocky, grassy, prickly (those dangone pricker bushes just sit there waiting to stab you, I swear). And SUNNY. Good heavens, I don’t think I saw a cloud in the sky until we were above them. We found a snippet of shade for a quick sandwich break, and then came across this spot for another one.

There was some haze, but that blue over the mountains is the sea running right into the sky.

There were some folks who were VERY interesting in what we were eating.

If they moved any quicker I would have been nervous. I mean, they just sat there STARING at us. WAITING. Hehehehehe…

And then we passed by this. Lovely and tranquil and bull free. (The bull the animal, that is, the other kind of bull is with us all the time…teehee).

I saw below me…the endless skyway…or wait, thats not right. But we did.

Estela, a happy camper on top.

And THEN. That’s when the adventure really began. And where the hole is in my pictures, unfortunately. We had decided not to go back down the way we went up, and instead to go down the other side of the mountain, and take the road around to where we had parked the car. Well, there wasn’t a marked route down from where we were, so we zigzagged our way, literally had to make like goats through the forest (we literally followed animal paths through the trees…and keep in mind that the animals are not tall) hoping each time that we emerged we’d be closer to where we were trying to go, and after about an hour and a half of being a goat, we landed on the dirt road. (Small side note here…first, C, for most of this time, was less than amused, and Estela and I were giggling because of the ridiculousness of it all, and second, thank heavens C has better mountain and directional sense than I do because we NEVER would have found our way down). Anyhoo, the road then took us, oh, like another 8 or so km, lacking cell service all the way because we weren’t exactly in the middle of ANYthing. And finally, FINALLY a car passed, which Estela, gathering strength from I don’t know where RAN AFTER and flagged down. Well, it turns out there was a  town just over the hill (we couldn’t see it), and these two lovely couples were just heading up to their vacation house at the top of the hill. We followed them up, and borrowed their phones because the car? The car. The car was like another 30 KM AWAY. Snort. And oops.

Us, eating some cheese that we had brought with us, and giggling at the whole thing. At like 9:30 at night! The people at the house were super nice though, they brought out water and beer and a snack and everything.

We had to phone a friend to come pick us up! He drove a whole hour to the town we were in, and another half an hour (which we four wheeled over pitch black windy dirt mountain roads, I didn’t breathe for 30 minutes) to where the car was. Jeeeeeez Louise.

Next time C says we are going for a little paseito, I might tell him to enjoy it and that I’ll see him later. 🙂