Galicia Profunda: part I

For those of us living in Catholic countries, this week is Semana Santa--the famous Spanish holiday where the faithful fill the streets, carrying wooden floats of saints and wearing Ku-Klux-Klan-like robes and pointed hats. We also get the whole week off from school, so I took advantage of the time to do a different sort of traveling.

Bright and early Saturday morning I walked down to the car rental place to meet with fellow auxiliar Noé from California and pick up our freedom-mobile, a little gray four-door Fiat. Once the car was loaded up with backpacks, groceries and board games we hit the road to Ourense to pick up our third partner in crime, Chelsea from Oregon. 

A few weeks previously, the three of us decided that we were sick of the usual European hostel travel. It had gotten sort of formulaic. Arrive in a city, navigate your way to the hostel you found the night before on Hostel World or Booking-dot-com, acquire a map and a list of destinations to see: a church, a museum, a castle or palace, a park and a restaurant... Rinse and repeat. So instead, we hit upon the idea of renting a car and a casa rural (see number 2) in the Ribeira Sacra. 

The Ribeira Sacra is a Denominación de Origen (DO), a sort of geographic certification of quality created by the Spanish government that primarily covers wines. This means that only wines that are produced in this region and that possess certain characteristics (the kinds of grapes and style of production, among other thins) can be labelled as DO Ribeira Sacra. Sort of like how real Champagne can only come from a certain region in France for it to be called Champagne. 

While the wines were a big draw, the reason behind the wines for me played a bigger part: the climate and geography. The region we visited has a much more continental climate than Santiago does, and about half the annual rainfall. That plus the wandering courses of the Ríos Miño and Sil make for a beautiful part of the world.

Entrance to the house with Chelsea and Noé in the doorway

We arrived at the house in the early afternoon and after a snacky lunch, we met with Manolo the house's owner, who hand-drew us a map of places we could see within the afternoon. 

I think most of the rest of this post will be photos, so sit back and relax.

The town of Castro Caldelas with its castle overlooking the Río Edo

A walk by a stream with some abandoned muiños (water mills)

Our first view of the Río Sil

An abandoned church

A field I shot while Chelsea asked the locals for directions

Up to this point I haven't mentioned just how disorganized we were leaving Santiago. Somehow I managed to leave the house with a wide selection of board games, but no towel, and Noé was stuck with two different shoes for the entirety of the trip. Originally, part of the reason we wanted a casa rural was because it gave us the option of cooking rather than eating out the whole time. Unfortunately we forgot some of the key ingredients for some of our dishes and ended up eating a lot of junk. But we were on holidays, so it was okay.

More pictures tomorrow of some of the beautiful awesome places we visited the next day.