Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 09:31:41

Hi, everybody! Daddy, did you mean to send us a blank email this morning?

Well, everybody, I’m off to Spain tonight. Jeez, I’m off to Spain tonight. I scheduled this trip to have something to look forward to, and it has been that something for so long, and now it’s here. I kinda don’t know what to do with myself. I know it’s going to be fun. I’ve learned so much about how to travel that I know I’ll be able to make fun for myself.

Anyhow, I’ll try and send a few emails while I’m there.

I love you, and I’ll miss you, and I’ll try to pick up a few MY-SISTER/DAUGHTER-WENT-TO-SPAIN-AND-ALL-I-GOT-WAS-THIS-LOUSY-TSHIRT T-shirts.

Love,

ame

 

Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 06:39:49

Hi, everybody. I’m in Zaragoza with Sasha, safe and sound and having fun. I knew I was in Spain when I told the cabbie that I was going to “Saragosa” and he said, “Ah, Tharagotha.” On top of that, it’s a big smokefest here. The airport was punctuated with “Puntas de Fumar”—just places to stand and smoke. The ticket agent at the bus station lit up as she was selling me my passage to Zaragoza. And a surprising number of young people have hacking, phlegmy coughs. Sasha and I are staying near the Basilica, upon which two bombs were dropped during the Civil War. Neither exploded, which was attributed of course to the divine intervention of La Virgen. Today will be about visiting el Museo, to see the works of Goya, and other hot spots. Off tomorrow to the north. We start our five day hike on the 6th.

I just had café con leche at an outdoor cafe. Life is awesome.

Love you guys,

ame

 

Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 15:32:32 –

Well, Sasha and I are way the hell up in the mountains. Like, 2300 meters up. What is that in feet? About a million, I reckon. We’re in a town called Vielha, which I learned is pronounced Vee-eh-ya. These crazy Catalunians. Cataloonies. Anyway, it looks like your regular ski resort town—lots of condos and hotels—but the people are sooooo nice. We asked a woman who was working in a mountain gear store how to get to the first refuge on the trail, and she said, “I’ll drive you there in the morning before I open up here.” Then she spent about half an hour helping us work out our itinerary, because we had accidently planned one day where we would have to hike 10 hours. Her boyfriend runs one of the refuges, and she called him and set everything up for us.

I called B and E’s cell phones today—no offense to the rest of you, but they’ve had their cell phones the longest and are the only numbers I’ve memorized. My cell phone is in my suitcase at the Llérida train station, so I’ll try and call the rest of you when I’m done hiking.

That’s it for now. I love yas.

ame

 

Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 10:06:30

Well, yesterday I finished the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

I guess I left off when I was in Vielha. Belén, the woman we met in the store whose boyfriend worked for Carros de Foc, picked us up in the morning and drove us for nearly an hour out of Vielha and into the national park. We snapped a few photos and promised to email Belén about how it went. And after filling Sasha’s Camelbak in a little waterfall, we were on our way. (For those of you worried about microbes, Sasha had these little tablets to purify the water, which made it taste like someone had left a fork in it overnight but supposedly killed all the stuff that could make us sick.) This was some of the most beautiful country I’d ever seen. And hard. Sasha set a solid pace and by the time we reached the Refugio Saboredo, I felt like my heart was going to pound its way right out of my chest. We picked up our Carros de Foc (Catalan, for Chariots of Fire) cards and got our first stamp. We also received ridiculous-looking “buffs”—visors with long cloth sleeves that cover one’s hair and neck. I slapped mine right on my head because I had brought neither a hat nor a bandana. Good thing I wore it too because I think it’s the only reason my face didn’t get charred. (It figures that the SPF 30 that I bought was neither oil-free nor sweatproof.) I was wearing a tank top and just absolutely fried my neck and shoulders. (Ironically, the SPF 8 that I put on my arms held up fine.)

We marched onward from Saboredo, and I’m not going to lie, there were more than a couple times when I thought I was going to die, and many others when I thought I’d quit. But I did it—I climbed a mountain and arrived in one piece at the Refugio Amitges. Sasha and I had a solid meal at Amitges then wound our way down the mountain to the Refugio Mallafre, where we would spend the night. There we befriended Fernando and his two preteen daughters. We chatted with them throughout dinner and then taught them how to play Spite and Malice (Rencor y Malicia, for those of you who wanted to know), a card game that Sasha had taught me.

Unfortunately, that’s where the fun ended that night. I don’t know if it was the time change or the endorphins or the snorers, but I couldn’t sleep at all. About midnight, Sasha asked me to go the bathroom with her because she was having a bit of an anxiety attack. She couldn’t sleep either, and it was darker than dark and quieter than quiet (except for the snorers). She just felt trapped, I guess. So we went out into el comedor (the dining area) and talked in whispers about life and relationships and whatnot for about an hour. At that point we went back in the bunkroom, but I’d be surprised if I slept more than an hour that night.

We arose the next morning exhausted and, in my case, queasy as hell. Sasha and I expected a solid day of hiking to the Refugio Blanc—maybe six or seven hours. Mallafre was pretty far down in a valley so we started trudging upward first thing. It was just gorgeous:  lots of flowers, winding rivulets, and even a herd of horses. We chatted with some of the hikers on the way up, including a Basque guy named Asier who was trekking with his dog. We ended up staying at the same refuges as he did over the next couple nights.

At around noon, we stopped to get a bite to eat from our picnics and saw that a number of people were heading over a mountain pass close by. We had been following yellow markers the day before so we worked our way up to another mountain pass that was indicated by those markers. We seemed to be the only people heading that way so after about an hour of climbing up giant rocks on all fours, I asked a woman who had come down the pass if she was coming from our next refuge. She said no and took out her very detailed map and indicated where we were ath the moment.  Turns out we should have followed the group up the other pass because what we were looking at was La Peguera, a 2726-meter high wall of rock and certainly the most treacherous-looking thing I’d ever seen.  The mountaineer woman recommended that we cross there and then follow the path on the other side because it was pretty well marked. Not taking the Peguera would mean going back down the rocks for an hour and then going over the Monestero pass, which was the one we should have taken. Climbing the Peguera would mean, well, climbing the Peguera and then going all the way down the other side, only to go up another pass—Saburó—on our way to Blanc. Going back probably would have been easier, but we were facing this mountain, and it was as if it were there to test our wills. And it did. I must say, and I’ll quote Sasha on this, that I “kicked some major ass” on that mountain. Sasha’s definitely in better cardiovascular health than I am (not to mention half my weight) and thus trudges up the mountain paths way faster than I ever could, but I rock the rockfalls. Maybe it’s all those times that I ran along the breakwater at Churches Beach, I don’t know.

When we reached the top, we yelled and hugged each other and sang the Rocky theme song. That was definitely the most physically and emotionally taxing thing I’d ever done. I felt so proud of myself. Of course, once at the top, we realized that now we had to wind our way down the other side. That path seemed eternal, with every little lake looking like the lake we needed to get to. Finally, we were in the vicinity of a once-huge lake that obviously, by the look of the hole, had drained out to a tenth its size. Beyond that crater was the next pass, Saburó. Close to the lake sat a group of two or three families drinking hot beverages from off a bunsen burner. They offered us coffee, and thank God for Sasha, she said we’d love some. (I really have to give up my issues with being a burden to people.) We sat and drank coffee and talked to these awesome people for about twenty minutes before tackling the next mountain.

Three hours later (that’s a total of nine and a quarter hours, for those of you that are counting), we made it to Blanc. In the pictures of Blanc on the Internet, it doesn’t seem possible that the lakes are that beautiful. In reality, they’re even more beautiful. I’ve truly never seen anything like it. Of course, my feet, legs, and back were so sore that I could barely appreciate it.

About a minute after we got there, a guy we had met at Belén’s store, Oscar, asked us if we were ready for our interview. A Catalunian TV program does spots sometimes on Carros de Foc. He had asked us when we were in Vielha if we would mind being interviewed, and it sounded like fun so we said yes. But there was nothing I wanted to do less after hiking more than nine hours than be interviewed for TV. Being the troopers that we are, however, we valiently scrubbed our faces and went  out to talk to the camera for 15 minutes. In Spanish, no less. (They had to translate it into Catalan later, so I don’t know why they wanted us to speak in Spanish—probably to laugh at us— but whatever.) The interviewer was a really cute guy named JuseMaria (JuseMaria, and I say Mariah, Sasha sang).

There was an awesome older couple from New York staying at Blanc that night and doing the Carros de Foc in the other direction. The woman gave Sasha and me each an OTC “sleepy pill” as she called them, which she always uses in the refuges and hostels because her husband snores. I didn’t get a full eight hours of restorative sleep or anything, but it was better than nothing.

The next day was pretty easy considering that we had to cross only one mountain pass (Saburó) and we had already done it the day before, due to our little mishap. On the rockfall near there, we met Raúl, Juanjo, Juancarlos, and Lola—Madrilenos with whom we would hang out for the next few days. At the Refugio Colomina, we played the first game of a Parcheesi tournament that spanned three refuges. Colomina itself was something of a disappointment. The people who ran it were kind of rude and there was a woman in our bunkroom with the worst sleep apnea ever. In fact, until the morning, when I saw her, I thought it was a giant beast of a man. I couldn’t believe so much noise came from such a little woman. NOTE TO DAD:  Never stay in another hostel during your travels. If people feel toward you the way I felt toward that woman, you may end up suffocated in your sleep.

The hike from Colomina to Llong was relatively easy—mostly downhill and very tranquil. We got to the refuge pretty early which left plenty of time for Parcheesi and Ocho Loco (I taught them Crazy Eights). Raúl turned out to be such a character. For anything anyone said, he had an immediate response which would bust everybody up. But, as Madrilenos often do, he talked like he had a mouth full of tortilla de patata so I caught about one out of every seven jokes. The four Madrilenos, a couple from Barcelona, and Sasha and I (we eventually called ourselves the Ocho Locos) all slept on the floor of the comedor because the bunks were all taken and then hiked out together the next morning. It was a bitch of a day (eight and a half hours), but hiking with the group meant lots of jokes and snack breaks and support when we really needed it. The Contraix, the most feared mountain pass in the whole Carros de Foc, was no more treacherous than the Peguera, but it nonetheless kicked my ass. I lost my sense of humor about twenty minutes before we got to the Refugio Ventosa, and I don’t remember the last time I felt so sleepy. It may have been a good thing that all the pieces to Ventosa’s Parcheesi board were missing because I’m not sure I could have stayed awake for a whole game. That night I slept like a child.

Sasha and I said our goodbyes the next morning (the rest of the group was continuing the circuit) and hiked our way down and out of the park. That was yesterday morning. It seems like a lifetime ago.

I may have done some permanent damange to my knees, but I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.

Sasha and I made our way to Barcelona yesterday and stayed in an overpriced hotel, where I’ll be staying again tonight because it’s easier than moving. I put Sasha on the train to the airport this morning and hopped on the Tourist Bus to take in the sights of Barcelona. I just decided that a walking tour was not in the cards after six days of hiking above the tree line. I did tromp around La Familia Sagrada, Gaudi’s half-finished cathedral, and the Park Güell, but that’s all the walking I’m doing today.

My internet session’s running out.  I love you all!

ame

 

Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 09:28:39

Well, tonight I’m supposed to hang out with the guy who interviewed me for Catalan television and an amiga of his. I’m enjoying myself—went to the Museo de la Erotica (ha!) and the Museo de la Historia de Cataluña today. And I just walked up and down La Rambla watching the human statues and whatnot. Stopped an hour ago to have a little tortilla de patata and olives…¿tienes celos?

Now, I think it’s time for a little siesta. Tomorrow I think I’ll go to Sitges, a beach town about 40 km from here.

Love you,

ame

 

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 08:45:38

Well, here I am in Madrid.

On Saturday, I took a day trip to Sitges, a beach town about 40 kilometers south of Barcelona. My Let’s Go book said that at night there was a huge gay party scene but that during the day the beaches were full of families. What it didn’t mention was the huge number of naked old people that line the beach as well. Boy, was I surprised when I put on my glasses!

I took the train from Barcelona yesterday and stayed in a hostel in the center of town. I met up with one of my buddies from the trail last night for churros y chocolate, and I’m going to Toledo with him and another friend on Wednesday.

Today is a dia festivo which means most everything is closed. I’m going to watch some of the Olympics and maybe see a movie.

Love,

ame

 

I didn’t write any emails to my family after this last one, though I was in Spain for four more days. I think that’s because things tanked after that. It wasn’t horrible. It’s just, I didn’t get over my issue of feeling like a burden to people, and I couldn’t make fun for myself, and I couldn’t make friends with strangers like Sasha could, and I don’t really like to be by myself for long stretches. I think that’s why I spend so much time on the internet now. I live by myself, but I don’t like to be by myself.

Anyway, I was thinking about this trip recently because I’m considering doing some traveling over fall break. Now I know. Hiking, good. Café con leche, good. Parcheesi, good. Being alone, bad.