Vall de Laguar

Optional excursion. Cost: 30 Euros. Destination: Vall de Laguar.

Oodles of poodles signed up, oodles of poodles dropped out. 30 Euros was too much, supposedly. And on top of that, there was already too much homework. Oodles, I suppose that isn’t the word to describe less than 25 people, and I’m pretty sure the whole group hadn’t signed up, but in any case, eight students wound up going. And seventeen people missed out big time.

La Professora and eight students, including myself, took the bus up to a small town, a pueblo, behind Denia, in the mountains. Friday night we ate Espegetis (spaghetti) and Salad and Pan (bread) and aceite de oliva (olive oil) after toodling around town—primarily sitting at the kid’s park oohing and awing at the view of the valley dropping down from almendras y olivares (almond and olive trees) into orange fields below us, running into a Denia framed by Móntgo and lowering jagged peaks, into the ocean. Climbing up the terraces were yet more almendras y olivares—creating a pastel blur of beauty in the face of austere, rocky summits spotted with chaparral.

Saturday morning we had hot milk with the choice of colacaol (a sweet chocolatey powder) or coffee (café con leche) and pan. Bread, yes, we live on bread. There were breakfast crackers too. Or cookies. However you’d like to call them. At nine we headed out on our hike . . . and I’ll tell you what . . . I cannot describe it.

First off—I was thrilled out of my mind to be on this trip. I was thrilled that the group was small, and not only small, but low-key. We spent Friday night reading around the fireplace. If someone had a question, s/he would ask it and whoever had the answer would offer it. It was quiet, calm, relaxing . . . oh, and before all of this, we went on a prickly pear adventure. I offered the knowledge that the fruit on that cactus there is edible and quite tasty . . . seven of us spent probably an hour sitting on a rock off the side of the road eating prickly pears and spitting seeds with enthusiasm, and then spent the night trying to hide from the professor why we were picking at our hands and lips (we didn’t want to worry her with the knowledge that we were eating things off the side of road).

Anywho, the hike. It was long and a lot of climbing and descending and it was beautiful. Beautiful not in the well-watered sense of beautiful or the springing with florescent flowers, but beautiful in scent, beautiful for the painting of almendras (soft pink petals) and olivares (soft green leaves) leaning over rocky terraces, beautiful for the painting of orange and grey and brown on the cliffs, for the shape of the land, for the juxtaposition of mountain and ocean, for the deep blue sky, for the sky light warming the skin, and the taste of air, cool and green in the shadows, sweet and earthy in the sun.

That night the professor headed back and us kiddos, er, young adults, were left loose. We made tortillas españolas . . . mmmm. A spent another quiet night in front of the fireplace. Sunday was a day of exploration. seven of us headed out to find a trail and find out way to the top of those peaks over there. Ready, set, go . . . where? When you aren’t following a path, it is hard to get lost, so we were fine, and it was quite a bit of fun. I had missed exploring, climbing up, down, around rocks, looking for the trailing, giving up on the trail, and finding the summit. Awesome. Literally, awesome. We sat a good hour at the summit after trying to decide which rocks were higher (this one? No, that one looks higher. Oh! And that one’s even higher! In Spanish, of course). From our throne we could see Vall de Laguar on one side and trace out our route from the day before, and another valley on the other side, with mountains further back that appeared to be snowcapped.

 

When we descended, we spent another hour sitting in the kids park where we ate lunch—visualize three college aged girls sitting in a circle with bread, knifes, and a bottle of olive oil in the middle—and did absolutely nothing.

It sounds like a “nothing” weekend, but it was everything. Not just for me either, from what I gathered, everyone in the group needed it. We were all continually complimenting the group as a whole for being adventurous, kind, and calm. For being okay with sitting all together without saying much at all. For allowing silence, questions, room to breath, and opportunities to laugh.