Penulimate week

My penultimate week of my time here has come and gone and I'm now into my final week at school, our final week in Azpeitia in The Basque Country. My final classes are on Thursday so it's pretty much a week of saying goodbye to a lot of people and to many places. We say goodbye to Azpeitia on Saturday and head off on our final trip with Miren - to San Sebastian to get the bus to Zaragoza and then on Sunday evening we fly to London, leaving London on Thursday, June 19th to arrive in Auckland, via a stop-over in Singapore, Saturday June 21st. Actually, we say goodbye to Miren in San Sebastian because she's not coming with us. Maybe she'll make it to NZ another day. She generously offered to drive us and our luggage to San Sebastian to get the bus, an offer which we gratefully accepted.

Azpeitia sits in a valley with a huge hill called Xoxote, pronounced 'Show shotee', towering up on the right hand side of the town right in front of our building, well, actually directly behind the building in front of ours. Finally, on Friday, we got to go to the top of it with Miren and Nerea.  We didn't walk up from the town, it's very steep and hard going, apparently, so again we took the easier option and drove 10 minutes down the road, took a right hand turn and up a little way to a car park where the car was parked and then we walked up to the top from there. It took us just over an hour to go up, looking at the scenery and views with no hurry and just under an hour to get down. No dilly dallying going down because there were enormous black clouds coming closer and closer by the second and rain seemed imminent. We got about halfway down before  it began to rain and fortunately for us, it never get very heavy. 

 At the beginning of our walk up the hill

 a stop over on the way

 At tomes the path was just rocks

this is the top of the steepest part

and then it was a bit easier and  a debate about which way to go

this time our sign was blue and white stipes and there were plenty of them although not alwys abvious at first glance

fresh and cold mountain water 

 shepherds' hut

almost there

 and here he is - Saint Ignatius

We spent a while wandering around at the top where there is a huge statue of Saint Ignatius standing right on the very edge 912 meters above Azpeitia. How it was securely placed up there defies my imagination and no one seems to know how long ago it was put there.

The view is great although it was impossible for us to get a photo of the whole of Azpeitia because on one side of the statue there was a spotlight in the middle of every shot and from the other side the rock jutted out cutting off our end of the town. Perhaps if we'd been braver we could have stood right on the edge of the platform but it was a very, very long drop before hitting the bottom so here's the best one we got. azpeitia - my home in the Basque hills. The building on the right of the picture almosy halway up is the Loyola Bascilica and the birthplace of Saint Ignatius.

one man, two woman and a saint on top of Xoxote

It would have been great to have had more time up there because it's a very beautiful, calm and peaceful area with some interesting places to poke around in. However, with the black clouds coming closer and also Miren didn't have the night off work and had some things to get done before work, so we had to be mindful of the time passing and .... also .... to have time to have lunch. There is a kind of little lodge/eating place up there but there was a bunch of school children eating inside when we were there so we just had coffee before going down. 

 the lodge

 looking across from Xoxote to the next hill. The track in the valley is the one that comes up from Azpeitia and the beginning of it is the road that our building is on. The little hillock and the building is for ice storage. That's what Miren knows but not how it works and the 4 of us were disappointed that we didn't have the time to go down and have a poke around.

 but the clouds were gathering so it was time to head down

on the way down we came across this herd of beautfulness - about 5 mares and foals and we did take a few minutes to just stand a watch them. They took no notice of us.

A few minutes drive down from the carpark we came to a building kind of like a big house that Nerea said was a restaurant so we investigated and sure enough, judging by the delicious aroma wafting out to meet us, it was a restaurant and we ate a very delicious lunch - the usual 3 courses, 1st plate, 2nd plate and postre (dessert). We never need much dinner after these lunches. The interesting thing is that there is no sign to say that this place is a restaurant, only the name of the house on the gate, and yes, the farm houses here have names. Miren had no idea that it's a restaurant but Nerea knew about it.

the restaurant, a fairly unpretentous little place. I couldn't get a photo from the front because it was on the edge of a precipice.

One of the things that Miren had to do before work that night was to perform in a concert put on by the guitar playing and singing group that she belongs to and which is run and taught by her sister, Amaia.  I think I've written about this group in a previous blog, I've been to a couple of their practice sessions, neither playing or singing, just watching and listening, and taking photos, of course.

So, at 6.30pm on Friday night we were sitting in Sanmartín, an exchurch, 5 minutes walk from our apartment, listening to 7 Basque women playing guitars and singing. Occasionally, Eva, Amaia's wife, would play the bongo drums in between her guitar playing. Yes, Amaia and Eva are wife and wife having had the first same sex marriage in Azpeitia. Can't imagine it was an easy time for them in this little Catholic town!

here they are - Amaia on the far right, eva on the far left and Miren is 3rd on the right

The performance was great and we felt very chuffed that we knew the people on the stage even if we didn't understand one word of any of the songs nor what Amaia said in between them. They had quite a fair sized audience listening to them. After the music performance there was a short break and then we found ourselves watching a play. We had guessed that we were going to see a play by what was going on re prop placement etc on the stage, and we also knew that we wouldn't understand any of the dialogue but decided that we'd stay for a look anyway. 

It was fantastic! 8 woman acting out a story, and then they'd break into the most amazing singing-dancing routines full of sound, movement and energy - just fabulous. Even though we never did work out the plot or story line nor who was who and why they were doing what they were doing, we totally enjoyed it and from the rousing applause, so did everyone else and it seemed to me like it was a full house. 

What did give us a surprise was that not long after the play had begun who should walk on to the stage but Amaia, Miren's sister who had just been leading the guitarists and singers. Not only is she a guitarist and singer, she is also an actor. It was fun to see her up there doing her thing on stage with the others and they all did a damn good job. We were very happy that we'd stayed to watch it.

 It was cold and raining when we came outside after the play was over so we called it a day and headed for our place. 

The next day, Saturday, Jaione and her husband, Kepa, were coming to pick us up at 9am and then we were off to a vineyard in La Rioja.

and that's another story, will tell you all about our greta day in La Rioja tomorrow.