If the author of those lines was a stupid random seminar introducer, he would have said “last but not least”, because, indeed, the last it is, but the least it is not, as you will soon see. But we are among brilliant minds who love climbing the world and sticking their ice axes into the right words. With this last adventure we came back in time to the beginning of all this, blending all required ingredients to enter the pantheon of the Aizkorri legend.
1st Ingredient: Improvisation
What does that mean? The organizers spread a few crumbs of information, just enough to know where to meet and to think about bringing a swimsuit. The organised don’t ask too much (in the best case they don’t ask anything). Consequences: the organised don’t have any expectation and stay flexible enough to scrub their gums with their big toe’s nail. Why is it important? Because adventure comes from the unexpected and the unexpected comes from improvisation and hazardous decisions.
This adventure started in Altsasua, because we had to abandon both the first option and the second-best alternative. Adiós Picos de Europa! Adiós sweet teddy bears! We only had one car, Asturias was too far, Soria too dominguero. Altsasua… exists. There are no other adjectives to describe it – except in the Wikipedia page, probably written with the fever of carnival and the tint of patxaran. According to Patxatint, Altsasua would mean “the burnt willow” as the first village Alsta (apparently full of willow), was wiped off the map by fire (sua) a long time ago. A quick glance on the nonexistent old town is enough to understand they didn’t make a lot of effort to rebuild the walls.
2nd Ingredient: Random Choices
You would probably wonder how the fuck did we get to this marvelous place? With an Alsa bus (no relation to the name of the city). We arrived early to spend the morning rinsing our eyes on the colorful facades and swallowing with difficulty in front of the appetizing local gastronomy. We visited the Eroski supermarket to really appreciate the style “Art Déco” of the fish section and rave again about the post-Christmas discount on fake Champagne and pâté of everything but duck liver. We got a good deal acquiring 12 grapes in a plastic fake-champagne fake-cup for less than 1 euro (cheaper than the wheal air). Getting the txuletas took a bit more time as the lady before us decided to remove the skin from every single chicken leg of the 87 she ordered.
We also visited the same bar twice: for the second breakfast and lunch. At 13:00 not a single fucking street had a secret for us and some of our comrades were already singing the hymn of the town adapting the lyrics with the menu of our favorite bar. They received warm and slobbery applauses from a traffic light and two mangy dogs looking like churros dipped in chocolate. It was time to take our second bus in direction to Uharte, near San Donato mountain.
3rd Ingredient: Childhood Spirit
Climb trees up, slide toboggan down and come back home with mud to the teeth: this is the taste of childhood. This was the spirit of our journey, expect that we had not home waiting for us with hot drinks and sparkling bath. At least we had sparkling drinks and patxaran enough to get warm from inside. 1000 vertical meters were separating us from this splendorous comfort. What childrens do when they have homework? They procrastinate, they play – in the mud if they have the sweet privilege of having it to hand.
Uharte is a place of temptation for children like us: a large park with wooden towers to climb, tubes to crawl through, slides to stretch your trousers and a cat to pet.
We started to move in direction of the mountain around 14:30. The first part of the path was flat and muddy, the second part was steep and dry.
We stopped several time to climb beautiful trees with space enough to host a whole family and to collect fire wood. Basque don’t think too much when they build path: they go straight, crossing contour lines, cliffs and whatever is in the way. How many vultures complained a Basque path was crossing in the middle of their nest? Ticks are the only ones not complaining about the situation. But let’s get back to the point.
4th Ingredient: Awesome View and Txuleta
We finally arrived at San Donato’s highland. Uharte means “island” in basque, and this is actually the first impression that comes to mind when looking to this wavy moor plunging all around into the fog: an island suspended in mid-air like a Venezuelan tepuy. From here, a few minutes were necessary to reach the refuge. We used the strength of our “harrijasotzaile” to open the heavy door probably not opened since deep August. He was, nevertheless, not strong enough for the next work, which consisted of drying the swampy ground of the refuge. Hercules probably had less trouble scrubbing out Augias’ stables.
Our fire was useless to warm up our feet and cook our txuletas. We danced Hungarian folkloric music to warm up our feet and ate half-raw txuletas. The prehistoric man in us must have died a long time ago and been covered by too many layers of civilisation to enable us to survive in a hostile environment.
We almost got blind in the explosion of the barbecue’s rock in the fire, our woody grills burned all in atrocious suffering, we sacrificed each of our hiking stick in cooking the meat to finally end with a charred flap of flesh on one side, still alive on the other. By luck, we each had twelve grapes and a bottle of fake champagne to feed our bodies before plunging them into the sleeping bag.
The night promised to be cool and damp, just the way we like it. Why should we drink? There is more water in the atmosphere than in our bottles. Let’s save our mouths for the patxaran, the pores of the skin will take care of these mineral deficiency issues! And so we fell asleep on these excellent and prophetic words.
Sunday is a hiking day for most of Basque people. They wake up before the French chicken starts to ring, open a baguette in the middle, put one tortilla or txorizo inside and they start going up (because flat hiking it’s not hiking, it’s walking to the supermarket or to pintxopote). It was still dark when the first tortilla’s shadows appeared in the fog. Most of our group was sleeping, some of us ostentatiously, like lighthouse keepers. After we woke up, some txorizos finally took the risk of entering the refuge and share the humid but welcoming living room with us.
Outside, the fog rolled in and out of the cornice walls like a psychedelic snail doing its morning yoga on the cliff face. And how can we not understand this gastropod? The panorama was about losing shell with the endless green lands of Andia-Urbasa Natural Park to the west, the legendary Aizkorri-Aratz and Aralar to the North and East and snowy Pyrenees tracing the southern horizon. The objective of the day was to reach the official geographic center of Basque Country (Euskal Herriko erdigunea) and from there to find a way to come back to civilization without dying: quite challenging.
Crossing the windy highlands feel really good and remind us some Nordic landscape (even if some big hairy beast and the taste of brunost were missing). Even the snow seemed to be trying to escape this freezing wind, curled up under the bulges of the landscape.
In a bushy hollow there were two concentric stone circles and in the center a miraculously standing cairn: we had before our eyes the center of the Basque Country. Some say Jules Verne was about writing a book called A journey to the center of Pintxo Country before he fell in love with the underground (a great guy that could have been part of our group).
5th Ingredient: Chaotic Firework Ending
We started going down in the shadow of the cliff, thinking hard on the best strategy about how to come back home as the only bus leaving from Uharte was already gone. Climbing trees helped us in this process. One of our companions climbed so high in the branches that he served us as an antenna to receive 5G. And Internet said we had two options (James Bond don’t look like real life but real life looks like James Bond): waiting for the train in Uharte to take the next bus from Altsasua, or take the bull by the horns spared by the wind and hitchhike to join Altsasua faster.
We chose the bull, he trampled us in a San Fermin way. We probably looked too miserable, munching on the remains of our cold, charred and rickety provisions that probably had a worse night than we did. The outstretched thumb, still oozing cheese, didn’t slow down any passers-by. It has to be said that there were hardly any passers-by. The road seemed like a Sunday stroll for the local domingueros, their pushchairs light and their noses in the air.
Half-conceding our failure, we walked to Uharte train station in the hope of being pitied, but to no avail. We decided to take the train ticket in the last moment to be sure not spending 2 euros for nothing, but neither the Hungarian dances nor the angelic faces had any effect: some of us had to take the train, sí o sí (we would not all fit in the driving living room of Zdravko). But it was too late to book tickets as we went beyond the deadline.
Never mind, we took the train, enjoying the golden hour and finally pooping in a decent vibrating toilet. Arriving at Altsasua we started going out the train, but a doubt seized us and we immediately went back up: error, it was indeed the Altsasua train station. Let the reader imagine the shock and dismay of the saloon driver when he heard the news.
Aizkorri-Aratz was ablaze with the last rays of sunshine when we were picked up at the next station to take us back to Altsasua, where the others were waiting for us in our favourite bar. On the screen, Basque pelota game, a plump pintxo on the plate and the froth of colacao on the moustache: pure, unadulterated comfort. Like a child coming back home after a whole afternoon splashing around in the mud.
Unconsciously, we found the mud – but behind each dirty patch lies the unexpected, that tickling feeling many of our fellow human beings in our advanced ages have lost forever. That was Aizkorri Berri.