We decided to head north in the general direction of Andorra because the temperature map said it would be more comfortable. Catalunya was absolutely amazing in so many ways and I still wanted to meander to Alhambra and see beautiful sites and beaches along the way. But, the weather forecast said that we would not be comfortable at night, given our experience of the previous night. One remarkable thing about Spain is that the people are rarely in a hurry but they are always on time. The siesta lifestyle is a refined rhythm: wake up early, drink some café, do some stuff in the morning, culminating in a big midday meal (diná in Catalán) with perhaps a glass of wine, relax somewhere cool when the sun is high in the sky and prepare for a nice evening with a light meal (supar). The rhythm is very precise, though relaxed and seemingly effortless. We were trying to get into sync with this rhythm. But, if we were not able to sleep comfortably, none of it would work. So, we started north with no particular destination except the cooler temperatures promised by the weather map. I set the navigator to a random campsite just south of Andorra.
The sights on the road were fantastic, every hilltop castle and every town nestled in the hills absolutely beautiful. We reached our hands out the windows and felt the air getting cooler and could see the dash thermometer drop slowly as we moved north and up into the mountains. This was the right path.
We drove slowly taking in all the beauty when some sort of building appeared high up in a mountain. A really big building, really high up. Wow! What in the world is that? At the same time a parking lot appeared and I quickly pulled over to take a longer look. We were gobsmacked as I parked at the size of the building and how high up the mountain it was. How do the Catalunyans do such things? I was curious what this was as "an engineer." Then, Azhr exclaimed, "A cable car!" Well, it was clear that we were going to take this ride. What we encountered can not be described with words or pictures. But, I'll leave you a few pictures and words anyways. Here are a few of the pictures we took in the order we experienced them.
The experience was nothing short of a spiritual awakening for me. I could write so many more details. How amazing was the local, artisanal yogurt and honey? How impressive was it that the lady selling cheese could instantly switch between Catalán, Spanish, Russian, English, French, German and who knows what else? What did all of the Latin we translated say? A book could written about this day. We were absolutely mesmerized. Words and pictures can hardly convey a hint of the experience.
When we came down, we were ecstatic. The first thing I listened to was an Andrés Palmar performance of Pajarillo that he had commented on my other zpage and I had found checking my Free2Z feed. I actually cried at the beauty.
I couldn't have imagined a moment so perfect.
Something remarkable and unexplainable was the absolute lack of crowds and bustling tourists. We stayed the night in the large cable car parking lot and no one else was taking advantage of the perfect weather and the free parking. I asked some locals and they said it was perfectly fine to park and sleep there. The parking lot had a capacity of maybe 100 or more camper vans and not a single vehicle was there except for us. The weather could not have been better. We woke up as the sun rose.
As with many places in Spain, we considered how we could stay happily in this place for the entire vacation. But, we decided we would move slowly towards Santiago de Compostela. We had unexpectedly become pilgrims.