Stage 1 (Hendaye-Sur-Mer --> St. Jean Pied de Port)

Howdy A Tous

(Ryan writing or Felice writing, as per the color of our toothbrushes.)

After a lovely and much more honeymoon-esque stay in the town of Biarritz for 1.5 days, we bussed to the beginning of the GR10 (the long distance French trail) at Hendaye-Sur-Mer. Felice remained eminently confident in my navigational abilities as we searched for the trail's beginning for over 2 hours, wandering steep hillsides. But we found it! --and thus began our Adventure-Moon.

We stopped about four or five native Hendayens and all of them told us that we were going the wrong way. (Several complimented Ryan on his French.) However, we soldiered on regardless. And we eventually found our first red and white striped marker, signifying the beginning of the trail. We said goodbye to the Atlantic, though we can still see her from some of the high spots.

The first day, the trail meandered through towns and past farms where we pilfered cherries and Ryan spoke with farmers. I listened and occasionally recognized words like "hello," "cheese," and the numbers 1 through 20. We hiked to a very picturesque spot dotted with cow patties, and we set up the tent carefully on a flat spot that afforded us views of pregnant mares and colts wearing cowbells dotting the surrounding hillside.

In the middle of the night, we awoke to the sound of cowbells, which I assumed were being worn by horses. We used our new LED flashlight (thanks, Dad) to determine that they were in fact, a small herd of cows and a bull surrounding our tent. We could hear them munching, farting, and coughing. (I named the asthmatic one Wheezy Joe.) I spent the next hour or so awake and terrified that the bull would attack our tent or that one of the giant cows would flop onto our tent thereby squishing our heads like grapefruits. We were lucky to live through the very Gary Larson cartoon experience and are trying not to camp too near cow paddies from here on out.

(Let it be known that I was never even slightly a-feared of the mobbing herd, and even if I was, I never showed it)

We awoke to what came to be a habitually overcast and rainy sky. I had presumed that this section of the trail would be a comfortable introduction to the ~10 mile hiking routine, but such was not the case. The trail climbs daily out of valleys and up and over cols (gaps) before descending into the next towns. With the addition of nearly constant rain, the hikes have been anything but "facile." However, whenever the clouds do part, morale immediately improves upon glimpsing the most emerald of plunging landscapes, dandruffed with distant sheep and wandering horses. And the GR10 makes for lovely touring of the Pays-Basque, a uniquely cultural region of France with an affinity for Pelote (Jai-Alai) and a strange relationship with Bakersfield, California.

We had a very nice hike to Bidarray, which began with warmth and sunlight, but ended up with several cloudbursts, as seems to be the daily norm. We climbed upwards from a camping spot in the middle of town to a spot with three life-sized crucifixes adorned by Jesus and some thieves. Below them was a field of Basque tombstones, which are uniquely cartoonish. We overestimated our progress and were only a quarter finished when we were sure we had only a quarter of the day's hike left, which was a little bit soul crushing. The guidebook warned us that we were in for a dangerous, steep (downhill) section, and it was not lying. The descent into a valley was gorgeous but incredibly difficult. Luckily, it stopped raining briefly for this spot. We encountered a few mountaingoats there, and Ryan even had a conversation with one. When the rain began again, we stumbled into a sacred cave (a grotte in France-talk). It was adorned with an iron cross and signs decrying it a "special place." We'd been told that the wetness dripping down the walls was miracle juice that would cure leprosy, so we dipped our fingers into it (hoping that there were no more leper-cooties leftover from long ago) and annointed ourselves (my ankle, Ryan's eyes) but there has been no change to report yet.

And now, we write from the burg of St. Jean Pied-de-Port, which is so named because it is situated at the base of the major "portal" through the Pyrenees that pilgrims of the past and present visit en route to their destination of Santiago, Spain. It's truly a fascinating place and very friendly to walkers, although the more common clientele are pilgrims, as mentioned, whose route and religiosity differs from our own. But it's been a lovely recharge, and we (I) scrubbed most of the funk from our laundry and will cheer on the USA in their world cup match this afternoon (what timing!)

Thanks so much for reading, funding, and supporting this episode of the Felice and Ryan show! Grosses bisous to all our loved family and friends. We'll try to keep things updated at our next stop in five days in Lescun, France.

(By the way, if you're interested in posting anything and have been able to understand our itinerary, you may address it to us with the label of "Poste Restante" and the town's postal code, which can easily be researched via interweb. For instance, we'll be swinging by the post office of Gavarnie, postal code 65120. Do try to give us a heads up by email so we can look for it.)