As Sombras - Lobios - Ourense - PART III

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There is a Spanish saying that goes something like: there is no two without a third (clearly, stay away from me for a professional translation), so here you have the third part of this post...and hopefully the last although you never know... ;-)

In the previous post we left it right when we got to the waterfall.

I think is worth noting how slippery these rocks were and at this time I'd like to present to the jury exhibit A

Volunteer drenched in water after a quick and unprepared dip.
I would like to thank Miguel for posing for this photo in such a natural way after testing the waters (without trying to). :-)

No animals nor humans have been injured in the making of this post. I would also like to say that the mobile and digital camera in Miguel's pockets survived the accident, alongside with his good humor. :-)

The place was really nice and we promised ourselves we would be coming back to spend the day there some other time, although next time we shall be following the trekking path from Lobios.

Look how transparent the water is

Inviting, isn't it?

After relaxing for a while it was time to get back to the others to continue with our trip.

After we all got together we got onto the 4x4 and followed another dirt track all the way to the main road, from there we followed the road all the way to Portugal (which wasn't far off).

Right after crossing the border you find yourself in a natural park called:

O parque do Geres, and almost at the very beginning there was a toll area

 so instead of crossing it we decided to park where everybody else was parking and walk from there.

It turned out the river Homem wasn´t too far off (that's where the waterfalls and the pools are).

The nicest ones were a little bit further up the river so we took path running alonside the river and went up the hill until we reached the next area with a nice pool.

Then back to the car and back to the road. Next stop Río Caldo, caldo means hot in latin so you can imagine what kind of river this is. We went to a place where they recently built a spa by the river and it also had a public area were there were plenty of people enjoying the water at almost 40C...certainly not something you would like to do on a hot day.

It's not a bad place to visit late afternoon although I would have guessed it gets much more interesting at night.

You would thing that was it for the day,...well, guess again...there was a tiny church on the way back to Ourense which turns out is the oldest Visigoth church in Spain, from the 7th century no less, the name of the village where this "famous" church sits is called Santa Comba de Bande so we decided to make it our next stop. This was Miguel's third attempt to visit this church which is always closed.

As we found out from one of the villagers, you only have to call the lady with the key and she comes and opens the church for you so you can visit it. This time the said lady was having a shower but it transpire from a later conversation with her that the villager that went to call her insisted on her to come and show us the church and she had to give up having her shower. Not sure about the politics behind who has the key and why but it seems to be a very ungreatful job when you can't even have a shower in peace. Nontheless the lady was quite chatty and very instructive she knew lots about the church.

Anyway, for the church I took the liberty to borrow some of Miguel's photos which were much better than mine.

And from the inside:

And that was all for the day...it was a long day but we really fit in quite a lot of stuff. On the way back we stopped in Ourense to change cars and there was quite a cool fountain right in front of us and I couldn't help myself...I had to take a picture.

I am really looking forward to going back there some other time. :-)


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