Felice and Ryan
Sunday, August 8, 2010
The visual accompaniment Part 2
Here are a few photos to go with the rest of our journey since our last visual accompaniment. Again, they´re out of order. Perhaps it´s best to scroll down to the bottom and work your way up; that way I don´t have to try any harder to figure anything out.
This humble body of water is the Meditteranean. Getting wet with it the first time was kind of a big deal, but since this picture was taken, we´ve been swimming in it most everyday. This was taken in Banyul Sur Mer, the first time we saw the sea up close! It was colder than I´d expected, but a beautiful sight.
Though we did not get a parade for arriving in Banyuls, we did get presented with this lovely assortment of painted tiles affixed to the corner of the office of tourism across the street from the beach. That´s my walking stick, Woody, that Ryan is gesticulating with. He was with me for at least half of the hike. And I had to leave him at that sign in the hopes that another hiker could use him. It was sad. The walking stick, not me.
If you strain a little bit, you´ll see Banyuls-sur-Mer in the background, rendered rather shadowy by the rapidly rising sun over the Mediterranean. You might also spot my smile, though it is slightly less apparent than it should be, given our proximity to the finish and my usual fondness for sunrises. I was less ectstatic due to the screaming wind that buffeted us miserable all night long and totally bummed out our otherwise perfect camping spot perched on Pic Sailfort, the last promonatory of our journey.
We got a little lost/"took a shortcut" and found a lot of raspberries and blueberries. We ate them for breakfast with our mueslix. Blackberries were in even greater abundance, but actually were less sweet than those we have growing on our local bush back in Asheville, North Carolina.
Above, there are horses, ponies, donkeys, and cows attacking our tent. Ryan is guarding our food supply. He is so cute when he´s being protective. And Felice is so cute when she waits in the tent for me to cook her hot chocolate every morning.
The first sighting of the sea! It´s waayyy back there, but it´s there, apparently. I was skeptical at the time, but Ryan is as surprised/thunderstruck as a 9-year-old left alone in a house at Christmas-time while his family is on vacation without him. I was actually trying to cheer up Felice, as this view came near the end of a long day´s hike. Yet all she claimed to be able to see were more mountains. What a typical Gemini.
This was taken on the HRP (High Route). You can tell we´re in France by the suckiness of the weather. Fortunately, I had recently recommended that we save our backs by mailing all our warmest clothing ahead to Banyuls from the last post office. What does "fortunately" mean again?
Hi! It´s me, Ryan, and I like getting on top of tall things, like Pic Carlit. (just under 3000 meters, which is roughly 692 Apple Pies.)
Insert joke about finally "getting my feet wet" while reading a map in the public thermal pools in downtown Ax-les-Thermes, a popular French spa town where we resupplied. Preferably a tasteful joke, and funny.
This is me packing up our food at the beginning of a long section. We would go to the grocery store, buy enough food for 4-8 days, then try to make it as light as possible by removing all of the superfluous packaging. Then we´d try to store it in such a way that the least amount of squishing would result.
Ryan´s homemade cramp-ons. He´s so creative. I´m still alive to bear my wife´s ridicule, aren´t I?
A campsite in the morning after one of my fondest days of the whole trip, taking a shortcut on a trail through high Spain called "El Port du Ciel" (Door to the sky). Sometimes my shortcuts work out great, which only encourages me.
Many may have climbed peaks such as this one before me, but few have worn such ridiculous hats while doing so.
This was a kind of Children of the Corn moment--an abandoned city which seemed to be inhabited entirely by this woman and her herd of cows.
El Encantadas, the most notorious peak of the Parc des Aguistortes (mentioned previously). I was rather smitten by this Parc, if you recall, and this seminal mountain´s twin peaks were supposedly representations of the feuding shepherds of separate valleys whom were transmorgrified into stone to bind the region together. But the Spanish government made it even more official in just 1995 when they created the Parc.
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