It was 1am and Luke pointed out that the heavy cloud cover cleared up and that the stars and moon were out. We decided this would be a great time to get a few star photos and see the mountains surrounding the Hotel Aliva since visibility was so low when we arrived earlier in the afternoon.
I got some really great shots of the surrounding landscape with the stars in the sky. I started taking night shots about a year and a half ago and I think I’m getting slightly better each time. I’m just too lazy to go out of my way to practice when I’m at home as the light pollution is too heavy.
Before going back to bed, Luke said we should try to catch the sunrise but we forgot to check what time that was. I set an alarm for 6am but it was still pitch black outside. I kept snoozing every 20 minutes for almost 2 hours because I didn’t want to miss it. This time lapse is nice but I should have let it go on for longer but I got impatient.
We left our room to get breakfast and it was quite the difference in scenery from when we arrived to now that the skies were all clear. The rooms don’t have a refrigerator nor did the hotel allow us to store our snacks in the restaurant fridge so we decided to stack everything in the windowsill at night as it was in the 50’s. I didn’t realize how quickly things warmed up in the morning though. The hard sheep cheese got a little squishy.
The trail maps that were available to us were not very descriptive for our hike even after talking with reception. We decided to just pick a direction that lead to a refuge station and go that way. Luke and Halea live in Albuquerque which is about 4,900ft above sea level whereas Minneapolis is a mere 250ft. They’re way more acclimated to the elevation than I am and they hike regularly, so I had to take more breaks as we went. Also I only brought 28 oz of water when I should have brought double that so I had a bit of anxiety with my water intake.
It’s really hard to show the sheer scale of these mountains. My photos will just have to make due that they’re huge. There were a lot more people on the trail than yesterday when we hiked to the hotel. I felt lame and weak because people much older than me were passing me by with just a walking stick and a water bottle. I did the best I could to mark in red part of the trail that we hiked up.
There was a couple I saw coming down the trail with 2 whippets, one of them looked exactly like Honey. The owners stopped for a chat and the dogs (Finny and Boris) got a head scratch break. Seeing the dogs gave me energy to keep going. We hiked about 4 miles before taking a longer snack break. You could see the refuge at the top of the cliff but Halea and I decided that we were going to call it while we still had energy to head back. Luke wanted to get to the end so he trekked on since he’s a stronger and faster hiker.
Halea and I made our way down slightly concerned about Luke’s wellbeing since he was hiking alone to the top but he’s got a big hunt happening in December that he needed to train for so he took this as an opportunity to do that. She and I took a break at the fork in the trail head and noticed a blue blur making its way quickly down the path. Luke said it took him 18 minutes to make it to the top but if we were going the pace we were going, it would have taken at least 45 minutes. Now that we were back together we made our way back to the hotel because at that point we had been hiking for 4.5 hours and wanted to get out of the sun.
I said I was disappointed in the lack of wildlife besides cows and sheeps but then a Eurasian griffon vulture started circling us overhead. It’s fun being out nature with a PhD biologist and the daughter of an ornithologist because I learned they are one of the largest birds in the world with a 9ft wingspan.
In total we hiked for 6 hours and covered 8.6 miles (13.8km) on our hike. I’ve never hiked this far and at this high of an elevation. The top of the gondola yesterday was already at 9,800 ft above sea level so I can’t even estimate how much higher we got with our hike. Luke got this amazing picture of me right before we arrived back to the hotel. Dinner wasn’t scheduled to start for another 2 hours so we brought out the rest of our snacks for a very well deserved break.
I don’t know if we were too tired to communicate properly in Spanish at dinner but it felt like there was some sort of loss in translation with the wait staff. I ordered the multi course meal which came with a beef stew, pork tenderloin, dessert, and a beverage. I asked to clarify what beverages counted which he said wine, pop, or water. I asked for a glass of white wine and they ended up bringing us an entire bottle with 3 glasses. My pork tenderloin came with french fries (which felt a bit out of place), Halea asked for “salsa de tomate” (tomato sauce). The waiter asked to clarify if she meant ketchup, which she said yes ketchup. 5 minutes passed, we were wondering where the ketchup was and he said they were heating up a bowl for us….what?
He comes back and brings us a steaming bowl of what tasted like marinara sauce with a spoon for my fries. I think you had to be there and be as tired as we were but the whole situation was both bizarre and hilarious.
This post was the most fun to read in Spain diaries. What an adventure!