First Day of Our Mountain Trek!

On Friday, May 17, we gathered our trekking gear and headed to class in the morning.  Having covered a large part of the history of Spain, we had a discussion on the economic crisis in Europe, particularly here in Spain.  It has been really interesting to work our way through Spain’s history right up to the current economic crisis – we have covered so much material and learned a lot!!

Instead of heading home after class to have comida (lunch) with our families, we gathered at the aqueduct to meet our mountain guides for the weekend, Gabriel and Vincente.  We piled into a couple of vehicles and were off to where we would start our trek!  We stopped along the way to eat our lunch, but then it was down to business!

We hiked for about four hours as we worked our way up and over the mountain.  We reached heights of 2,100 meters – that is almost 7,000 feet above sea level!  The hike was a challenge, but was it ever worth it!  We saw incredible views that we could never see any other way, and we all grew a little closer as we sang and laughed to pass the time on our trek into the mountains.

This is where we parked the cars and started our trek up the mountain!

The view from partway up the mountain - it was incredible to turn around and see this!

Beautiful Views!

Our first view of our shelter - way down on the other side of the lake!