La Ruta Liza: Mi largo fin de semana en Asturias con Wendy Walker

Last week, I made a long weekend for myself and headed to the north. I took advantage of working at two schools and managed to talk my way out of working on a Thursday at one school and a Monday at the other without either school knowing I planned to take TWO days off, enabling me to travel on a Wednesday night and stay through Monday morning of this week, thus spending four complete days in Spain's green, sea-facing, mountainous province, Asturias. I found cheap plane tickets, 10 euros each way, and convinced the teachers at each of my schools that I could make up for missing the days by working on Fridays in the future, which I normally have off (today, I made up for one of the days). I planned to stay with Wendy Walker, a professor of mine from Huxley who has been working and living in Oviedo (capitol city of Asturias) this Fall, teaching eco-turism and parks/recreation classes to a group of students traveling abroad. She greeted me warmly when I arrived to her flat late on Wednesday night, an hour later than anticipated due to a labor strike at Madrid's airport. She generously hosted me for the entire weekend. We planned a different excursion for each day, making my weekend in Asturias by far the most adventuresome and varied of any prior, and I loved being in Wendy's company immensely.

This is the university in Oviedo, where Wendy has been working this season. Doesn't that sky look like November in Washington?

At times during the weekend, I saw bits and pieces of the northernmost route for Camino de Santiago and I very much would love to return to the north to walk along its coast from one end to the other.

Certainly, the cloud-filled sky, humidity and almost constant chance of rain reminded me of home. Moreover, I discovered that Asturian forests host licorice and maidenhair fern varieties, as well as Alder, Hazelnut, Birch, Beach and Pine trees that create landscapes quite similar to Western Washington. Many of the plants are foreign, yet familiar. I have never encountered before traveling. I acquainted myself with the Madrono Trees too (Strawberry Trees); these are not the same as our Pacific NW Madrona, but they are quite similar and belong to the same great family of plants, Heather. I can see why the Spanish explorers mistook our Madrona for their Madrono and thus named the Native American species for their Spanish version.


There are some Madrono Trees planted on Western's campus outside of the Rec Center...look for them! Also, the fruits are edible

Thursday: My solo day in Oviedo. Wendy taught her class that day so I spent the day exploring freely and I had a great time doing so. I found the city to be much calmer and cleaner than Madrid. I liked being in a place where I didn't need to take a metro to get from one end of town to the other; I could walk! I visited an archeological museum for free. It was a really interesting museum, filled with artifacts from prehistoric, roman and medieval times..I took some photos.

Prehistoric horse art

It's the sort of museum I'd love to go back to. I made my way up into the hills to walk along a paseo from which I enjoyed vistas of the city and of hills and mountains, many snow covered, in the distance.

el paseo

Colorful houses in the countryside

I met up with Wendy that evening and we went out to eat a traditional Asturian dinner together. I was excited, after having been told by many that the food in northern Spain is a great deal more delicious than Madrid's. I knew what I would order before I even opened the menu to look at the options-- Fabada Asturiana!! I had seen these words posted on signs outside restaurants all day as I explored town. We also shared a couple of bottles of Sidra (Cider) and a serving of flan for desert. While we ate, we listened to traditional Celtic Asturian bagpipe music, live! Part of what tips you off that you're in a different region culturally when you're in Northern Spain is the strong Celtic traditions still persisting, including beautiful Celtic folk music.

Fabada Asturiana: White beans, chorizo, blood sausage, bacon fat and ham bone. There are records of Asturians eating this dish as far back as the 1600s. Originally it is quite a humble supper, mainly consisting of beans and whatever meaty ends people had to add to it. Today, it is the most prototypical traditional Asturian entree, present on the Menu del Dia (Daily Special) at every restaurant in Oviedo. It's hearty farming food. This week in the metro, I've noticed many advertisements for canned fabada..something tells me this just wouldn't be the same...

This is our waiter pouring sidra for us. People go through training courses especially to become sidra pourers. As you can see, it's quite a trick. They pour from way up high, aiming for the glass, in order to make the otherwise flat cider carbonated. You must drink what the waiter pours fairly immediately or else it turns flat again. Drinking sidra natural is not for those who sip! It demands more attention from servers, as well, for they must come back again and again pouring sidra for you until you finish the bottle! This tradition lends itself to sticky restaurant floors!! For every pour, a little sidra slips onto the floor.

After dining, we poked around the center of town looking at a few of the hundreds of quirky statues randomly strewn about Oviedo. We especially sought out viewing, "la Maternidad (aka la Gorda)" by Botero..

Afterward, we ventured to meet up with some of Wendy's students at a show at a local bar where a group from Portland, Blind Pilot, were to perform. Unfortunately, we didn't get to hear them for very long; by the time they came on we were tired and ready to rest for the adventure awaiting us in the morning. Still, I felt lucky to see them live in small-city Oviedo, free of charge. The lead singer had lived in Oviedo and attended the school there and so the group had a special invitation, I'm sure, to the town and bar. In Madrid, seeing them would have cost 25 euros..more than my round-trip airfare to Oviedo!

Friday: We rose early to catch a bus to Cobadonga.

Iglesia at Cobadonga, built around 1860..so not terribly old.

From Cobadonga, we piled into a taxi van with three Venezuelan immigrants to Spain and headed to los Lagos, in el Parque Nacional de las Montanas de Cobadonga, part of Picos de Europa. I felt relieved in the mountains, far from any major city. I felt comfortable in mind, body and spirit. It was interesting to notice differences in Spanish national park management customs..the greatest and most apparent being that this park was pastoral. Part of what this national park preserves and protects is the traditional agrarian lifestyle that has for centuries altered the ecosystem. The mountains, from a distance, appear as raw and pristine as ever a mountain could, but up close it is apparent that these places have been and remain to be heavily influenced by humans. Biodiversity of wildflowers, shrubs, grasses and the creatures that would be attracted by a more varied array of plantlife is lower...and the lakes and streams are not so tempting to drink from as those that run through Mt Rainier National Park, considering the quantity of cow pies underfoot. Clearly, the plants and animals fittest to live along with livestock and farmer flourish.. We saw many a stone sheep herder's shed, and they blended in well with the natural rock formations. I am not writing this to criticize Spanish parks, but rather to describe them as foreign places, much as Spanish cities are to me. I hadn't considered that the way by which a national park serves to protect and preserve could vary so from country to country.

A sheep herder's place

free ranging horses..

One of the two lakes

Liza meets Fall in Picos de Europa

Here I am with Wendy Walker and a Yew Tree! What a treat..

Wendy Walker in Parque Nacional de los lagos de Cobadonga

Wendy and I hitched a ride back to Cobadonga and hung around for nearly two hours, exploring la cueva sagrada (sacred cave, a shrine to catholic saints and virgins) and the most beautiful rosy toned church I'd ever seen (rosy because its made from local limestone). We reveled at our luck at having met a day with no rain, even as the sky began to change to a telling shade of grey.

Shrine at the end of la cueva sagrada.

Cobadonga is famous for the battle fought by Pelayo, the first King of Asturias, cerca 725; it marked the start of Christian reconquest of Spain from the Moors.

At Cobadonga, I also noticed mossy rocks covered with licorice fern, Pacific Northwesterner's delight!

On our way back to Oviedo, we stopped at another town, Cangas de Onis, to take a look around, seeing el Puente Romano (not actually a roman bridge, but it is beautiful..and quite steep on either side). It has been made famous recently by the movie, The Way, about el Camino de Santiago). We had a delightful dinner of papas bravas and stuffed peppers (okay, not the best dinner we'd had..the potatoes were just french fries...at least we didn't go hungry!) We made it back to Oviedo around 10, tired as cats and happy as clams, with big plans for Saturday just a few hours of sleep away!

el Puente Romano

I had never crossed such a steep bridge..wouldn't like to ride a horse over it; however, we saw a woman succeed to do this.

Saturday: I was lucky enough to be invited by Wendy to tag along on a class outing with some of her eco-tourism students.We bused to a small village, rented bicycles and rode along la senda del oso..an old mining railroad that has been turned into a bike trail which runs 20 kilometers along a salmon rearing river with lush forest and cliff surroundings. It also takes you by a bear rehabilitation center and through a town where there is an interpretive center dedicated to educating people about the bears that live in Northern Spain and to bear conservation..we saw two bears from the trail and stopped in at the center. I had no idea that Grizzly Bears roam wild in Northern Spain!! They live only in very remote parts of Europe! The trail we rode took us through many narrow rock tunnels and at times the cliff edges offered us cover from rain..we met a couple of wandering goats at one point along the way and some of Wendy's students expressed fear to me that these goats might harm us if we approached them..I said, "They're just goats!" I rode toward them and sure enough, they high tailed it up a cliff away from us! I sure loved pedaling along la senda! I felt at home, again, body, mind and spirit, just as I had hiking in the mountains the day before. The day we spent riding, amid washes of rain and bursts of sunshine, filled me up with contentment. I ended the day not soaked, but rather, grateful.

Wendy's eco-tourism students, la Senda del Oso

Goats!!!

At the end of the trail...

Oviedo rocks!

Food storage on stilts..

Casa del Oso is in this town, the bear intepretive center

Sunday: We slept in, 'til 8:30 or so. This was to be our most relaxed day, dedicated to exploring a beach neither of us had yet been to along the northern coast of Asturias. But first, Wendy and I strolled through Parque de San Francisco together. She is well versed in the history of this park and was able to teach me about many of the monuments there, as well as introduce me to the oldest tree in the park. We encountered a flowering rhododendron bush and I'm sure this was a good omen to us!

fungi growing on an old stump!

This is Wendy with the oldest tree in San Francisco Park, 300 years old. The park was once the garden of a monestary.

Soon, we headed via train to a small fishing village, Cudillero. The train left us a couple of kilometers up from the town. Cudillero itself had just one main street which spiraled down through a fairly steep and sudden valley to the ocean, houses and shops crammed together on either side. We had to walk along a highway for a couple of kilometers further before reaching a beach not affected by seawalls. The beach we found was unmarked to us by way of road and so who knows if we trespassed or not in order to make it there...we saw no signs warning us from going, and so we went. We took a chance, and trusted my iphone's googlemaps, and bravely traversed a dirt road toward the edge of the land. We encountered cows along the way and soon crossed a bridge over the railroad...and entered a thick and thorny gorse forest! The path down to the beach twisted and turned, steeply falling at times, and we went only as far as we felt comfortable and then sat and gazed out on the wild north coast. It was absolutely beautiful. Before rain struck, we made our way back toward Cudillero. After eating by the sea, a menu del dia of sopa de mariscos, paella, escalopes, and vino, we walked up into the old town a ways and climbed a spiral tower mirador...I very much enjoyed the views from above, as well as seeing fish hanging up to dry on clotheslines and one rooftop entirely covered by licorice fern.

Atlantic Ocean

Cudillero

A lighthouse we weren't aloud to visit

Licorice fern roof!

just hanging out to dry...

We caught a bus from Cudillero to Aviles and from Aviles transferred to a bus to Oviedo...we slept. I woke up, walked through Oviedo before sunset to the bus station to catch the airport bus...to get to the airport, to board the plane that would bring me back to Madrid! Transitioning back into my life here in the big city has been a bit of a trick. I really loved being in the north, and I can't help but admit here in my blog that I am better suited to live in smaller towns with greater exposure to nature and the elements of this planet..