Stage 2 and 3 -Bye-bye, Basque, Hello Haute

The last time we wrote was St. Jean Pied du Port, and so much has happened since then. Firstly, thanks to Mariana for guest-hosting. The internet is almost as rare as peanut butter in these parts. (Though we do still have some good NC peanut butter.)

Things that I am scared of now that never bothered me before: cows, bed bugs, icy snow, giardhea--sp?

One of our first two nights after Pied du Port: We wandered through a day of mist to the top of a mountain where a farmer family with some adorable kids sold us bread and cheese. We were probably somewhere spectacular but could see only meters (I am so European now) ahead of us. We ended up in a sweet ski community of triangular huts surrounded by horses. We climbed up to the top of a cliff to tent at a beautiful panoramic view to sleep our coldest night yet, which was not so bad because of our amazing sleeping bag and liner. (Thanks moms and dads.)

In the morning, the view had been completely erased by a giant rubber eraser, and we were all set to take our sorry butts down to the low route. When we finished our breakfast of hot cocoa and cereal, the fog was gone, and we set off on our longest day yet, on the High Route, in what has become a series of adventurous/slightly stupid decisions that we are none the worse for.

For those unfamiliar, there are 3 trails that span the Pyrenees from coast to coast; the best/stupidest is the High Route Pyreene (HRP), and I tried to work/hide it in our itinerary as much as logistically possible. However, it turns out France got the same kind of winter as most of the states; there's still quite a bit of snow about on the high passes.

In any case, the nicer weather and my pouting look earned us the HRP route for a couple days, as well as our first >2000 meter summit! En route, we met a friendly Hollander named Claus, a recently retired physical therapist whose GPS was kind to us throughout. We also at this point officially left the Pays Basque and entered the Haute (High) Pyrenees, and boy do they look it; snow strewn, imposing, and Alpish. We also had our first night in a Cabane. These are off duty shephard/hunter cabins that are of highly variable quality and open to use by hikers for FREE. Veritable gold mines sometimes.

We hiked up a giant mountainfor a long time to get to the best camp spot yet, at the source of a river ( the answer to a kid's question "Where does water come from?" Magically from underground. And it's cold, clean, clear. It was 360 degrees of mountains and made Ryan want to frolic and me want to sleep. From there we climbed down ( my favorite type of "climb") to our break day in Lescune, where we stayed in a hotel with kittens and took more showers than were necessary. We ate real food and watched some good World Cup. And we ran into Claus again, who is wonderful, but a GPS-addict. Lescune had my favorite church so far, tons of roses, and extremely friendly people, none of whom speak English. But it's not their fault. It's the republicans.

We stayed in the most interesting cabin so far, after a grizzly bout of hail/thunderstorm. The cabin is carved out of a cave with a rear wall that backs into a giant, curved boulder. The other walls are about four feet thick, and it was so dark with the windows/door shut that you could not tell if your eyes were open or shut. This section is in the middle of the Pyrenese National Park, which I kind of hate because of the amount of rules about where and when to camp. These rules are less than in US National Parks, it should be mentioned, and there doesn't seem to be anyone about to enforce them.

In effort to preserve our waning morale and it anticipation of a less appealing bout of weather, we descended from the HRP and took a couple days on our old familiar French GR10, which again rolled up and down through the French foothills, in and out of mountain villages. Even those which might've provisioned us with our addiction of baguette and cheese are frustratingly deserted between the hours of 12 and 3.30, which usually happens to be when we're passing through.

Good weather was coming, so I convinced (forced) Felice back into the High Pyrenees for an exciting leap over a pass exceeding 2700 meters! I tried to jury rig crampons out of tent spikes, but the snow, though in abundance, proved soft enough to not require them. At the most vertigo-inspiring spots, Felice seemed more comfortable than I, I should confess. By the way, this pass took us over the shoulder of Vignemale, the highest mountain on the entire border of France/Spain.

Now we are in the lovely town of Gaaverny. We are supposed to head into Spain soon. We are probably going to deviate from our itinerary at this point, so if you would like to mail us anything, please don't do so until Goulier or thereafter, and please email to let us know.

Sorry we are unable to post photos; we are working on it. Don't take your QWERTY keyboards for granted. Thanks for reading; I hope this isn't too boring. We love you, and we'll try to write again in about a week or so.

Au revoir! Bon courage!