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Wendy & I can now add "Climbing the Peña Montañesa" to the list of local activities that we can tell our visitors about!

 

It was a tough day to the summit and back but well worth it.

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We had one of my old school friends and his wife come over from England and stay with us a few weeks ago. It was great to catch up - it's been a long time. We were together at Witbank High School back in the day. Of course now Wendy has a load of "info" on me that she will use when she needs to get the upper hand . . .

 

We picked my friends up from Zaragoza airport, which is the nearest airport to us - about a 2 hour drive. It was the first time we'd ever been there and what a pleasure. Reminded us a bit of Lanseria airport - only much smaller and quieter. Parking is reasonably priced and right outside the front doors, the cafeteria was clean and had some decent food & drink and because it's not very busy, getting through check-in and security were a breeze. I'm really pleased because this is our "local" airport :-) 

 

Having someone stay with us who's never been here before is good for us - because it reminds us of how we felt when we first found this place. There's just no way around the fact that eventually you just get used to wherever you live and can even take it for granted. In the same way that someone living near a railway line or a freeway eventually gets used to the noise, if you live in somewhere quiet like Guaso, you get used to it.

 

We can see Monte Perdido, which is the third highest mountain the the Pyrenees, from our garden - but you do get used to looking at the mountains, you get used to it being so very quiet, you get used to the lack of fences and to living in a small community where, if you hear a car coming, you can usually tell who it is before it comes into view by either the engine sound or what time of the day it is!

 

It doesn't hurt to have someone remind you of how lucky you are to live where you live and how very beautiful it all is.

 

So . . . thanks to John & Michelle for re-motivating us!

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Our Spanish car pulling our South African trailer :-)
 
It wasn't easy bringing the trailer over here. You have to de-register it in SA to take it out of the country which turned out to be a bit complicated, but it's such a nice trailer and I really thought we could use it here - so we bought it over.
 
In Spain it has the same plate as the car towing it and there's no additional tax to pay.
 
We have big plans for it . . . watch this space! :-)

 

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Wendy & I can now add "Climbing the Peña Montañesa" to the list of local activities that we can tell our visitors about!

 

It was a tough day to the summit and back but well worth it.

Your photoshopping skills have improved in leaps and bounds! 

 

Hehe :)

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Can't be too many Venters in Spain..?

 

 

How did you move the Venter?  :eek:

 

 

I've haven't seen another one here so far . . .

 

We put it in our container with everything else.

 

Over here even basic trailers are pretty expensive and I've only seen "open" trailers for sale. I'm sure you'd find something similar to this if you looked hard enough but we already had the Venter and I didn't want to let it go for nothing in SA so we bought it.

 

:-)

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The "Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido" is a vast National Park with World Heritage status. It is rich with wildlife, mountains, lakes & forests and is home to the third highest peak in the Pyrenees mountains - the Monte Perdido (the Lost Mountain) - which summits at 3355m.

 

The park is about an hours drive from our house - and we still haven't been and had a look!

 

We can see the Monte Perdido from the farmhouse kitchen window though :-)

 

 

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Some time ago Wendy and I joined an online worldwide network of Expats called "Internations".

 

Yesterday we drove through to Zaragoza to do some shopping and then in the evening we attended an Internations get-together held in an Irish Bar in the center of Zaragoza.

 

We spent the evening speaking lots of English and chatting to people from Spain, Portugal, Germany, the UK, the US, Russia and Equador! We had a lovely evening and made some new friends . . . and we we're home by 3am!

Edited by Bonus
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Last week I posted a link to this locally made cultural movie on our "The Pyrenees . . . " thread here on Bikehub.

 

This week on Monday at our "Learn Spanish" lesson, which is held at the Adult Education Center up in Ainsa Old Town, I mentioned going to the premier of the movie to our teacher, Carmen, who - it turns out - is the Mayoress of the village of Broto, which features in the movie and who had also been invited to the premier!

 

We had a nice little chat, in Spanish of course, about the film, the area it was filmed in and the people who made it 1f642.png

 

From last weeks post:

 

Last week we were invited to the local movie theater in Boltaña to see the premier of a movie that was made locally with financial help from several local councils and "Crowd Funding".

 

The film was called "Ara Salvaje" which translates into "the wild river Ara" and it's a story about a local man, Martin Campoy, who wanted to ride, document and promote the last remaining wild river in this area, the river Ara.

 

The film was in Spanish but we got the general idea of what was going on. More importantly we got to see some fantastic footage, including shots taken from a drone, of the river Ara that passes through Boltaña and Ainsa on it's way from the top of the mountains down into the Mediano Dam.

 

We cross this river every time we go pretty much anywhere from our house and we swim in it in the Summer. Rivers are important here and this movie did a good job of showing that.

 

Watch this Promo clip that was made when the rider and his wife were originally fundraising and get a taste of where it is that we live . . . .  :-)

 

https://youtu.be/AuVRiPQCSLw

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Tomorrow will be our final day of picking Olives!

 

For the last two and a half weeks we've been helping Ramon & Rosa pick olives for a few hours every day. They have around 50 trees, some big & some small, that needed to be done. Half are up here at the farm and the others are down on the land near the river. We've had beautiful weather and it's certainly been "an experience" but by now all four of us are sick to death of it and will be glad when the last tree is finished tomorrow!

 

I guess we have around a thousand kilos of olives by now which will be taken to the olive processing plant down the road and pressed into oil.

 

You only harvest olives every two years - so whatever they get from this batch has to last that long . . .

 

 

Ramon and Rosa. Rosa always has a smile ready :-)

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We woke up to a surprise heavy mist this morning. I could barely see 5m out of the windows!

 

By 10am the sun had burned through the mist up in Guaso though and it turned into another sunny day.

 

We could still see mist down in the valleys so we drove up our hill to Guaso church and took a couple of pics and a video. Snow fell on the higher mountains last night too.

 

https://youtu.be/UybvQK7pOb0

 

 

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