Bright sunshine this morning! Set off east along the coast and came upon a fantastic church set on top of a small island: the tenth century Hermitaqe of San Juan de Gaztelugatxe. We climbed up the 231 stone steps to the church and had wonderful view up and down the coast. Continued on to the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve which covers the entire watershed of a long estuary headed by the town of Guernica for which the famous Picasso painting was done. We drove around the entire wetlands and couldn’t find any way to access it to look for birds. Beautiful scenery and great views of beautiful beaches and town and marsh, but, oh, well…
We found the little village of Akorda from which a short hike leaves for a few kilometers up to a small church high on a hill. We hiked through pine and eucalyptus plantations, which seem to cover a distressingly large percentage of the Basque country, and finally got to the native oak forest and climbed up to the church of San Pablo and overlooked the entire Biosphere as it started to rain once again! Down over an ancient slippery limestone road and back to Guernica. Revived with Magnum ice cream bars (which we also bought in Honduras last Feb) and made our way back to the Arresi.
The hotel advertises Wi-Fi and I can easily connect, but something is wrong with their system as Internet Explorer rejects it, so I haven’t sent out any blogs for a while. Maybe the next hotel?
We drove a few miles to another hotel and had very good meal, not as incredible as last night’s, but interesting in that my baked fish (hake?) was covered in tiny 4” baby eels that resemble white pieces of spagetti with a grey streak down one side. Interesting little crunch to them and, thank God, they don’t wiggle around like big freshly cooked eels of my youth! Bob had “steak cooked on a stone” which was potatoes, steak and peppers delivered sizzling on an extremely hot thick clay plate sitting in a metal rack that could cause any number of law suits in the States!
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