Cyprus - Day 0

--

Yes, I am back on the road again...well actually on the skies would be more appropiate in this case.

Today I travelled to London and what you know, it was raining!! I must admit I would have been disapointed otherwise. ;-)

Tomorrow I'll start my two weeks in Cyprus. I'll be attending Alex and Skeve's wedding which will be on the 26th if my memory serves me well and I'll be telling you all about it.

Today when I left for the coach that took me to the airport I had this sinking feeling I was forgetting something... and it didn't hit me until I got to the airport. I forgot to take a hat which is easy to fix, don't get surprised if you get to see a photo of yours truly wearing a Welcome to Cyprus kind of hat. :-)

The other thing I forgot was my cufflings... I've got 8 pairs and brought none... and the shirt without the cufflings would look like a straitjacket...and that's not the image I am aiming for, that's for sure!

So I looked around int the airport and found some nice ones for a whopping 200€... I wasn't that desperate for the cufflings... it is better to look like you're wearing a straitjacket than actually needing one because paying that for a pair of cufflings directly qualifies you for a nice good-looking straitjacket from the closest metal institution...

Anyway...after recovering from that mini heart attach and walking around for a little bit longer I found some nice ones more "on my budget" :-)

Not bad!, I could have done worse, couldn't I?

But coming back to Cyprus, in case you're wondering, this is where it is:

There is a lot to see in Cyprus and lots of things to do too. I've been reading about the diving and it looks like an excelent place for it. Good visibility up to 40m, more than 200 marine species and above all...my favorite,  one of the most famous wrecks in the world, the Zenobia a 200 metre long sunk ferry. :-)

There are also mountains, beach and above all...good weather, my number one condition for a holiday destination. :-)

I am really looking forward to this. Let's see how it goes... :-)



--

Belesar - Ourense - Lobios - PART IV

--

After going to bed so late last night we decided to have a little bit of a sleep in so we ended up getting up at 10 am.

We had a tight day in front of us, Miguel had to be back in Vigo at 20:30 and the trail we decided to do today was in Portugal, close to the border, probably about 1 and a half hours from Ourense which meant we had to leave to be back on time in Vigo at about 18:00 hours and we would be getting there to start the trekking at about 12:30 which meant we only had 5 and a half hours to do the trekking.

Do you remember, dear reader, the time we went to visit the mine in "As sombras"?, well that was the Spanish mine, today we were aiming at visiting the Portuguese mine, which is right on the same mountain but on the other side. One side of the mountain is Spanish the other side is Portuguese and each country created a mine of its own on their side and they almost got to join them... it is said that only 150 metres separate one mine from the other.

The climb is about 12 Km or so and at a leisury pace it should take 2 hours 45 - 3 hours or so (remember you're climbing up) we ended up doing it in 2 hours 15, not because we were on a race but because our time was extremely limited, and this is what we learnt from the experience:

- If you freeze your water and take it with you to a climb, you'll be carrying up the mountain a bunch of ice because it'll still be frozen by the time you get to the top.
- If you freeze an isotonic drink and take it with you, you'll be climbing up with an ice lolly in your rucksack.
- If you attempt this trail wearing soft sole shoes... all the swearing will prevent you from entering into the heavens in the afterlife.
- If you get stung by an unknown insect on your way up, don't worry! the swelling will subside in 2-3 days.

And with those pearls of wisdom that summarise our learnings of that day, let's go into it with more detail:

The trail was as bad as it gets, not because it wasn't clear or difficult to follow but because the ground was all covered in small rocks.

Most of the trail was like above and believe me when I tell you that it is not nice doing 12 Km walking over that kind of terrain. You have to keep your eyes on the ground most of the time so you don't have much time to appreciate the beauty around you, although sometimes we stopped a few seconds to take a few photos here and there so we could see at home what was the place like because in between the rocks and the sweating we didn't get to appreciated much when we were doing it.

But now that I look at the photos, it actually is a nice place. :-)

There was a point where we thought we had reached the summit since we couldn't see any other higher places, the vegetation was minimal but there were some cattle around and a small refuge

 
but as it turned out that wasn't were the mine was, the mine was in another mountain nearby so we continued the trail until we reached it.

You can see the use of bricks in the contruction here, unlike on the Spanish side which indicates this site has been active for longer than the Spanish side, if I recall correctly the Spanish mine was closed in the 60s beginning of the 70s, I suspect the Portuguese mine was active for quite a bit longer.

View from the top

And this is one of the mine galleries although not the main entrance. It turned out you cannot visit this mine. The main entrance is a hole on the ground and you need either a very, very long rope or a lift. As per this side gallery (probably a ventilation tunnel)...well, judge by yourself:

Would you get in there? You probably can't appreciate it on this photo but it is flooded all the way up to your knees.

We had  a quick lunch, remember we were on the clock, and headed down.
Unfortunately the way down was the same as the way up so...we had a rocky way down

I can't even remember the amount of times he twisted our ankles...

There was a green area in the whole trail, only one place with a little bit of green and some shade, which with the scorching heat we had was a nice change.

As you can see from the picture above, there are times with far more water and it flows down that rock.

Three quaters down the trail we found a natural and very tempting pool and as we had half an hour to spare we decided to cool down in it. :-)

Tempting isn't it?
If one day they invent a cryonisation capsule, I am pretty sure it won't be as cold as this water, but with the heat and all the walking...it was a welcoming experience.

After the swimming we kept walking until we made it back to the car...where we found another thirsty walker.

I don't remember drinking as much as I drank that day. My stomach was full and I couldn't possibly put one more drop in it but I was still thirsty and so was Miguel...luckly we knew of a close by fountain so we went there and kept drinking and drinking and got some more water for the way back. Then we headed back to Vigo...with a water bottle in our hands.

We did like the place but what we disliked was the trail we followed and we would have liked spending some more time on the summit exploring the area but due to the time constrain we couldn't. We thought it was an area worth visiting again although not throuth the same trail. There is another way coming from Spain but that will be another adventure for another weekend though. :-)


--

Belesar - Ourense - Lobios - PART III

--

We found an interesting lizard with a blue tail by the waterfall.

I know, it's just a lizard but look at the tail! it's a different colour than the rest of the body...

Anyway, I am not sure what was worse, going down to the pool or coming back up...in both cases we had to do it on our fours and it was quite a steep climb as you can see in this video.

The views were quite nice, a lot of vegetation all around us and as decided to take an alternative path to go back we found what looked like old stables built like the houses in the village, taking advantage of the existing boulders in the area.

From there, we got back to the car and headed to Ourense were we were going to spend the night. When we got there it was quite late but we thought it would be a good idea to go and try out the newly build Spa in Outariz, just because we are worth it. :-)

Now, had Aída been around she probably would have told me off about taking the camera with me and start taking snaps all around but as she wasn't here...once the cat's away...

 
so...I took as many as I could but in the end one of employees in the place told me it wasn't allowed bringing cameras to the spa due to privacy issues and I had to delete the photos I had taken... I managed to convince him to let me keep the photos. I prentended to have only one photo, the last one where I wasn't breaching anyones's privacy, luckly the guy was nice and allowed me to keep it but I had to take my camera back to the locker room... oh well, at least I've managed to take a few photos. :-)

We probably spent 2-3 hours in the place, it was about 1 am when we left the spa and after the lunch we had had we weren't very hungry but but could eat something so we decided to go and leave our stuff in the flat in Ourense and then to go out and go to the old part of the town to have a drink and grab a bite...

We made it back to the flat at 2:30 am so instead of getting up at 7 am the following day as per our original plan, we opted for having a sleep in and get up at 10:00 am. We had plans for the following day!! :-)
  

--

Belesar - Ourense - Lobios - PART II

--


Miguel said he had heard of a very nice waterfall and a natural pool in Lobios so we thought we could go and check it out, see whether we could find it... So off we went to Lobios...


When we got there we decided to pay a visit to the local information centre since the following day we would be doing some trekking in the area (that was part of our original plan for the second day), we got inside and started chatting to the girl attending the office, she was quite helpful with all related to the trekking paths and the areas we were planning on visiting the following day and some other times in the future but when it came to the waterfall she had no idea what we were talking about. The name of the place is "Black well waterfall" because the pool is very deep so it's black, you can't see the bottom.

   She rang someone on the phone and asked about this place and from what we overheard the guy on the other end of the phone was pretty much saying he wished us luck in making it out of there alive and we were crazy for trying to go there but despite of that, he told her where the place was, well they didn't give us an exact location just the name of the closest village. We couldn't understand the reaction... Miguel and I stared at each other and wondered what was they were hidding from us, what was it that they didn't tell us. We tried to get some more info from the girl at the office once she hung up but she didn't know, never heard of the place before... now there was no question. We had to go there!!


The village in question is: El Cela and it turned out to be quite an amazing village. The area is filled with huge granitic boulders and they build the houses by using this boulders, it's hard to explain and easier to show with a few pictures.

I know, it looks like some catastrophic event landed that huge boulder on top of the house...nothing further fromt he truth. They actually used that boulder to build the house around it. That boulder is the wall!

The whole village has been built like that.

When we got to the village we found 3 villagers chatting among themselves so we asked them about the "black well waterfall" and the 3 of them knew the waterfall but none knew how to get there...exactly. They knew in which direction to go but didn't know whether there was a path to get there... That didn't inspire much confidence but followed there indications...

We started following a path that was going to the river (that's the best info we could gather from the 3 villagers). Perhaps it's worth mentioning that one of the villagers was a girl that kept winking an eye to Miguel all the time while we were chatting...but I don't think he even noticed! not that that stopped me from pulling his leg all the way down to the river...

While walking down this path we met 3 other hikers going in the opposite direction and we asked them whether they knew how to go to the "black well waterfall", and they said they had tried to get there, they managed to go there last year but this year they couldn't find the path although they remembered last year when they found "the path" it was more sliding down the hill than actual walking  and they had to go on their fours all the way...

That didn't sound very encoraging and we starting thinking about alternative things we could do instead of looking for the waterfall... When we got to the river we turned around and started to walk back to the village when we found another path that was going in the direction of the place where the waterfall was supposed to be so without much hesitation we followed it. At first it was a wide and clear path but a few Kilometres later we found ourselves in the middle of a forest following a barely noticable track.

On the first photo you can see the track...on the second you can only guess its general direction...

Finally "the track" splitted in two and one was heading towards the river and the other towards the Village so we decided to try the one heading towards the river.

We finally got to a place from where we could see the "black well pool" but the way down there was not easy and we had to go on our fours to get there. After a couple of scares, a few scratches and bruises we managed to get to the bottom where the waterfall was... and it was amazing! judge by yourself.

After all the effort there was no way we wouldn't have a swim in there!

And then it was time to go back...

--