Visiting Alberto’s Office
83.75 miles hiked, 3 Cultural Events Attended
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With the heat and no airflow in our hotel room, I don’t think I slept at all last night. Pam did a little better, but we were both exhausted when we “woke up.” Because we had to keep the tiny window open, my allergies kicked in and gave me a sinus headache that wouldn’t stop. As we were supposed to go on a hike with our super guide, Alberto Marín López, I felt terrible so I called Alberto and asked if we could meet him at 10:00 instead of 9:00 so the ibuprofen could work its magic.
We stumbled down to breakfast and the owner of our hotel, Los Siete Reyes, Eduardo, was working and I told him the air conditioning wasn’t working and asked if there was there any way we change rooms. He told us that the only room available was the one across the hall, but he was very worried about the air conditioning problem. He called his partner to come over and look at the situation as we had breakfast.
His partner showed up very quickly and headed up the stairs to assess the situation. As we sat looking up other hotels we could go to, his partner returned quickly, and they went into a huddle. When I heard the word “califacación” I wanted to crawl under the table and die. We had turned on the heat instead of the air conditioning! It was all my fault!
Both Pam and I had messed with the little control box many times. The graphics are microscopic on the control unit, and we thought they were a breeze and a sun. What they were actually heat and a snowflake. After taking a picture of the unit and zooming in to maximum, we finally saw what they were. Have I gotten so blind I can no longer read things? I’m having an existential crisis over getting old right now. I apologized over and over. I felt so stupid. I told them that from now on, they need to give tests to American guest to see if we can understand the basics of life. Eduardo told me they were the ones that panicked because if their central air was broken, they were in a world of hurt as this is one of their busiest seasons. Eduardo’s partner correctly set the AC and by the time we finished breakfast our room was the inviting and perfectly cooled. We can’t recommend Los Siete Reyes enough and apologize to all of you reading for completely embarrassing our entire country with my idiocy. I hope you will let me back in the country so we can see our kitties again.
When Alberto showed up at 10:00 we told him the story and I thought he was going to die of laughter. In retrospect, it is really funny, but at the time I swear you could have powered half of Spain on the burning red of embarrassment in my cheeks. Alberto was so kind not to bring it up again, but as I am made of weaker stuff, if I were him, it would have been working hard to work it into every conversation with me for life.
On Alberto’s web site for his company, Senderos Ordeso, he mentions that he’s certified to guide the blind on many activities. We asked him how he specialized in that. He had a friend that taught at a school for the blind and his friend ask Alberto for help coming up with activities to introduce nature to his students. It was a little learning as you go, but they found ways to do it. For example, to tell the differences in plants, you smell and taste them. To do rock climbing, he worked with the students to teach the feel of tethered climbing and so on. Alberto loves doing that work and was so proud that some of the original students kept coming back to learn, through high school and university, and are now very good friends of his.
After two hikes with Alberto, Pam and I were trying to figure out what makes him such an exceptional guide. He obviously loves sharing his world with people, but we think he has incredible empathy and reads people so well. He’s an excellent teacher, but he always just knows what you want in the moment. If you want to be quiet, he’s quiet. When you want to talk, he talks. You never feel pressured or hurried. If you want a vacation experience that teaches you many things, but at the exact right level for YOU, Alberto is the best. We love the hikes Pam and I have done alone, but we will remember and cherish more the hikes we went on with Alberto even more. He gave us the ultimate hiking experience. It doesn’t matter what hiking level you are at, or what your limitations are, Alberto will work with you and make your experience profound. We can’t recommend, or thank, Alberto enough.
Our plan for the day was Pradera de Ordesa to see the waterfalls. This is one of the most popular hikes in the entire Pyrenees, but as we have learned it’s nothing like the popularity of an equivalent hike in America. For example, if in the summer you want to walk Looking Glass Falls in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park (GSMNP) the number of people is more than the entire Broadway area of Manhattan on a weekend in July. As Pam can attest, I get weirded out quickly if there’s a lot of people on a trail, but today was a breeze.
I do have to apologize that we got Alberto’s rating wrong after our first hike. We had given him 10 out of 5 starts, but we must update that rating. Driving up to the park, Alberto abruptly pulls off the road into a national part information point in a town below the park. He turns to us and says, “We should use the bathroom here, because the one this one is cleaner than the ones in the park.” For all the ladies out there, you know how important a clean bathroom is, so we changed our rating for Alberto to 11 stars out of 5. Now do you understand when I say Alberto has amazing empathy?
We arrived at the parking lot and started hiking the trail, Alberto said we need to get off the trail so he can show us something. He said that no one hiking the regular trail sees this, but it’s one of the best views in the park. After spreading his arms wide, Alberto says, “Welcome to my office!” He wasn’t kidding as we found out he does this hike a couple of times a week.
All the accolades for Pradera de Ordesa don’t cover the half of it. I could write hundreds of thousands of words about the hike, but to spare you, I’ll cover some highlights I thought were fascinating. I hope to encourage all of you to take this relatively easy hike for yourselves. Even if you are not a hiker, you can do it. I believe in you! Of course, you will all hire Alberto to go with you, too!
The above, innocuous, purple flower is hiding a secret: it’s carnivorous, well insectivorous, so it won’t eat you specifically. Look closely at the leaves. The leaves secrete a smell that small flies cannot resist, but that substance is sticky so traps them. The leaves produce another digestive enzyme to break down the soft parts of the insect, so the plant gets the nitrogen it needs. So, what happens when the leaves fill up with fly skeletons? That’s where a wild symbiotic relationship occurs. A less than a millimeter in size spider hovers around the butterwort plants, and it has evolved to not get stuck in the sticky stuff, so it cleans the leaves for food.
While not a particularly compelling photo, there’s a lot of history being told, and I do mean A LOT. If you look closely at the grey band near the top of the mountains, you are looking directly into the Jurassic age, the time when dinosaurs trembled the earth. Anything below that grey band is even farther back in time. You can now call yourselves time explorers.
This photo was taken by a very nice Belgian couple. When they learned we were from the US, the started telling us about all the national parks they had been to. I told them they knew more of American than 99% of Americans. They had been every were and couldn’t say enough about our park system. I wish Americans knew how good we have it. Oh, that’s the first of the waterfalls on the hike.
I couldn’t capture these falls in a way to do them justice. The water curves to the right at the top because it is hitting sandstone, which is waterproof, so it doesn’t get worn down. At the right it hits limestone, which wears away. The water hit another seam of sandstone so the water goes back left. The ying and the yang fight it out.
This gorgeous, crinkly leaf beauty is endemic only to Northern Spain in the Pyrenees. It is also one of the few plants that survived in Europe during the last ice age. That makes it over 350,000,000 years old. Finally, something is older than me.
The above photo is for all my fellow geeks out there. We cross the prime meridian on the hike! You might also know this as Greenwich Mean Time. The geek in me squealed in delight.
Capturing the size of the waterfalls was hard, but in the Stairstep falls, you can see Pam and Alberto for scale. All of the falls were huge.
Pam’s mom Lila loved waterfalls. Carrying her ashes on our hikes and letting her become part of these beautiful places in Wales and Spain has been of great comfort to Pam. We miss her so much.
On the hike, I told Alberto that we have already decided that that moment when he ran into his friend Pedro (sorry, I got his name wrong in that post) that was going to be the highlight of our trip no matter what else happens. I think Alberto was surprised we said that, but he kindly shared the photo of that reunion. To have been able to share that pure joy can’t be topped.
When Alberto dropped us off at Los Siete Reyes, I told him something my dad said to me when I was a little boy. My dad was in the Army, and we lived in Alaska at the time. Dad was always going on crazy adventures with different people, but some more than others. He told me you learn a lot about a person after hiking with them, and if you were still having a good time after two days, you found a friend. Alberto, our friend, we loved hiking with you. Thank you.
As always, thank you for reading.
Ok fine. I’m sold. Please ask Alberto which weeks are particularly good for visiting his office, when I might be assured the wild narcissus, rose daphne, Pyrenees violet and other magical experiences. 🇪🇸
Wow, what a marvelous post. So much beauty and knowledge shared with us!