Queue up Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing”

I should have known I was going to have “a day”. I was dreaming about walking into a spa to have a massage when suddenly I was jolted awake by, BAAAAAA. BAAAAAA BAAAA (or whatever obnoxious sound is the default for iPhone alarms).

In a misplaced show of optimism, Antonio thought we could beat the rain today, and had us out of the hotel by 8:30 AM (a miracle in and of itself), and drove us to El Torcal National Park an hour and a half south. Yes, my friends, today is the day where my hiking boots met real dirt (and lots of poop). It is with great sadness that I report everyone in our group sidestepped a huge “boar brownie” and yours truly went right on top of it. Yep, full foot. How I missed it I can’t tell you, it was sitting there, large and dark, isolated on a flat slab of white limestone rock. So, in case there was any doubt after our hike, I can officially claim that I have poop-on-the-shoe. Jim who is driving his personal car, told me he has a strict “no poop in my car” policy and told me I had to go in the van.

But back to the day, El Torcal is a mountain range near the coast of Spain. Coming from Colorado, I’m thinking it’s more like a series of large foothills covered in large flat flaky rocks that are stacked high like cattywampus pancakes.

We had a guide assigned by the national park, Jose, to lead us through the different formations. He was a (use your deep voice here) manly man of nature. The entire hike he was chewing on what I think was a stick, and only for a brief 17 seconds put up his hoodie.

One of the formations he led us through was the labyrinth within the labyrinth. If it sounds ominous it was. There were crevasses in between the stacks of pancake rocks that went down 300 feet. At one point it took 3 people to hoist me up one of those rocks to keep going on some path that only Jose could see. We crouched through narrow gaps in between the rocks, scrambled up and down the mountain. You know, a typical hike for a bunch of desert dwellers whose only concern is to not get attacked by a jumping cholla.

Did I mention it was raining? It was. The rocks were slick and what little dirt there was had turned into thick muddy pools. (Note: I had mud up to my knees. Peter was pretty unhappy with the state of my pants, especially after he just washed them). When we started out on this epic adventure, the sun was peeking through the clouds so I put on my sunglasses in a show of insanity (I was worried about not wearing sunscreen, but, well….that turned out to be stupid). Then it started to rain, then sleet, then at the very, very end the sun came out. Peter managed to do all this slick rock scrambling effortlessly with an umbrella in one hand and using his other hand to provide heroic assistance when needed with his other.

Public Service Announcement: In Spain they set up random “seat-belt checkpoints”. We were stopped by a police officer today on our way to the park. As we were all speculating as to the reasons why, the officer looked inside the van, asked Antonio a question and then waved us on. They take safety seriously in Spain, wear your seatbelt.

Lastly, in another episode of “Spanish Language Foibles”, I bring you the latest installment in “Mary walks into the men’s bathroom”. This time it was intentional though. We were in a restaurant and the women’s bathroom was out of order, the family bathroom was backed up, the only working toilet appeared to be in the men’s bathroom. In a show of girl-power, me and another member of the group, I’ll call her Trixie, tried to hijack the men’s bathroom which had one stall with a proper floor-to-ceiling door. To our surprise someone was stuck in the stall…the door wouldn’t open. So we launched Operation Freedom from Toliet. I stayed to prevent anyone from going into the bathroom and thus thwarting our takeover, and Trixie ran for help. In the meantime, another woman queued up to use the men’s bathroom and I tried telling her it’s not working, “No trabajando”. She looked at me very confused and walked off. We finally freed him, and I made him stand watch while I used the stall with the door open.

Now, the linguistic foible. When I told our guides what I said to that poor woman they started laughing…. hard. Apparently I said, “I’m not working”. Good grief. I also realized that when we got to the hotel, upon meeting our guide, Jose, instead of saying “It’s a pleasure to meet you”, I think I said “It’s a pleasure to meet me”. Maybe I should just stop torturing the unsuspecting Spanish public and go back to the universal language of pantomime.

Our day didn’t stop here, but I need to stop. Tomorrow, I yet again follow Peter on some wild-assed goose chase straight down a gorge while dressed for a nice dinner.

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