Hiking hut

So after a welcome sleep in till about 10-11ish I looked out the window to see the welcome sight of clear skies!!!  Yay,. Finally the mist had cleared and we could see the beauty of the Pyrenees. Today we were going to head into the mountains of the Pyrenees for a “day” hike and to camp in a hut in the mountains. We first tried to find out a few ways to miss the tolls for the “freeway” the following day, cleaned and packed, as we wouldn’t be back till early the next morning. Funky again decided that not only did he not want to come on the hike, he didn’t want to camp either. My fears of if he will like Norway are heightened following this decision – maybe he was just tired and needed a day alone.. I hope it is the latter. Anyway, Tarks and I left him behind (to his movies – joking that maybe bad boys 2 the movie is better when you watch it in France) and took off into the mountains – destination – A big dam. It was no hoover damn, but it was pretty impressive. The roads up into the mountains were not so bad but were narrow in some parts – making for some nervous moments when another car came along. We arrived at the Dam, driving past a postcard worthy lake in the process and parked and went for a walk around the very steep and rocky shores of the lake. The most impressive attribute of this lake was how clear the water was… It was swimming pool like, except without the cloudiness of chlorine! In all the water I have seen so far, this was in the top 1 or 2 of the clearest waters I have ever seen. With the mountains on a backdrop it almost had Slovenia’s lake’s measure. If only it had a walking track around it. We walked past some snow that hadn’t melted (we were at 2180 meters) which was amazing considering it is the middle of summer here. While we were walking around Tarks decided to drop his glasses down a rock hole.. It sounded like it hit three rocks and vanished. After a good hour of moving rocks and pushing boulders (serious) we finally got them back (saving $200!). As we were walking around the lake, there were lots of crystal clear waterfalls trickling down the rocks, I assume that it was the snow melting – it was delicious! – Whoever says water doesn’t have a taste is crazy… Best water
ever.

We headed along the lake until we got forced back by some cliffs after a short bout of risky rock climbing where a fall would have seen us reluctantly enter the crystal clear but FREEZING water of the lake - and back to the car a few hours later – completing our day hike haha. We probably rock jumped/climbed/scrambled our way along 2kms of shoreline, it took us much longer as we were trying to look at the scenery while climbing. The next destination was a mountain hut in the Pyrenees. Now there are many huts, but it wasn’t signed, it was shown to us on a map by our CS host Julian (woop). We filled our day packs up with the food we got that morning from the supermarket and headed off on a steep but short 40 min walk to the hut – passing a few curious mountain goats that followed us for a while and freestyling it across a valley when we kinda lost the path.  We arrived at the old style mountain hut, it was not like I had pictured it. Where was the wooden ski lodge style hut? But just because it wasn’t like what I thought doesn’t mean that wasn’t good. We were there for about 10-15 minutes before we were greeted by an old French man… Ok, so if there ever was a situation where French was needed, it was then.  In my defence I guess I spoke more French then he spoke English, but that didn’t help the communications… We had a few laughs – E.g I pointed to the mist that had rolled in to cover the mountains by that time, and he offered the binoculars!!  We spoke about the tour de france kinda – with some handy photos of the tour being on the newspapers to light the fire. We then made a fire in the hut to cook our snags on, proved a little difficult as even the paper in the hut was a little damp. But the fire eventually roared to life, the heat a nice addition to the small concrete and stone hut and we then reached our next difficulty.. How to cook them… We ended up using a steel type toast cooking wire frame to cook the snags which was amusing cause the fat from the sausages was fuelling the fire causing more flames to burn our dinner! Much to the amusement of the Frenchman. We eventually made our way outside to enjoy the twilight of the mountains and went to bed – I propped my window open so I could go to sleep listening to the water of the trickling stream nearby. – How’s the serenity…..

I’m not on a witch-hunt here, but Funky has seemed to have missed out on things that I would put up in the top 5 things that we have done so far – Sailing on the Mediterranean, hiking in a hut, the run around the lake in Slovenia, ballooning in Brugge…. I don’t understand.. We had conditions that were much worse in Indonesia – and we survived. I do understand that camping in a under equipped hut on a mountain might not be for everyone though (he did say that “it not my thing”,) but it is disappointing that one of the persons that you travel with misses out on things that you find amazing – I think due to laziness.

A wakeup call by the sheep herding farmer and his two very well trained border collies ensured an early morning rise, no time for breakfast as we had the road trip of all time in front of us – 18 hours – I think only bettered by my trip home from Brisbane 3 years ago.  We hiked out so much quicker than we did coming up obviously, and drove back to where we were staying. We packed and cleaned the car a little and I took first stint on the road trip – 18 hours it took us(Coming from almost the border of France and spain, to halfway up the Netherlands) Leaving at 8:30am and being much much easier to drive during the day rather than through the night from Holland to Slovenia. Having not done a lot of driving thus far, I thought I might drive a little – and it wasn’t so bad – I finished at 3:30 – and only with 1 bottle of coke haha. Easier when you are supposed to be awake though. Tomorrow – Sunday will be our rest day, we are having tea with Wouter (Fondue I believe) which will be interesting, as we missed out in Switzerland. Monday we head off to Norway, with a stop off in Denmark – to meet the worlds happiest people, and then across to Sweden. I hope to meet up with the Faz and Di in Holland in August, but a decision on whether a trip to Iceland will be made later on this week. (expensive trip though – about 1600-1700 euro for the return boat trip only!!)