Our third day started with us buying tickets for the Real Madrid Futbol match that was happening that very night... It was a holy moment as I purchased the entradas via the magic of the Internet. We would have to pick them up at some kind of magical ticket dispensing machine at a later time.
We also had this crazy idea that we could climb the HIGHEST Mountain in Spain…
Could we do both these things in one day? How long could it take, we thought, I mean it’s only the craggy peak of the highest most deadly mountain in all of Spain and perhaps the world!
We decided that we would have to venture out into the wilderness and defeat the mountain because ever time we looked out the window we could see it laughing at us.
We started our journey by blissfully leaving the house and following a road to what might be the foot of the mountain. Little did we know that this mountain was tricky. Someone had surrounded it with a nasty deep stream and a bunch of houses between us and the stream. There was no road! No road at all to the foot of the mountain or even the stream! We decided what any light-footed young hearted men would have. We scaled multiple gates and walls of random people's homes in order to get closer to the mount. After scaling the last wall (everyone's houses here are surrounded by massive walls), we saw the stream. After pacing in front of it and verbally challenging it to move we saw a fallen tree that had mostly bridged the murky waters. I decided I would climb across and make sure it was safe. I succeeded and Elijah made pranced across carrying both our cameras in his bag as if he had done this a hundred thousand times. After crossing the stream we found that a second stream / river was between us and the mountain, apparently the stream branched off at some point just to make our lives difficult. We were forced to walk through some strange farmer's field and then right through his front yard and out his locked gate. Our idea was that somewhere along the road there would be a bridge crossing the second river / stream / lake. We were right, only it was a private bridge leading to a locked gate that had signs al over it labeling our certain death if we crossed. We did anyway and climbed over the gate. There was now a long road leading us straight to the mountain but as we neared is base, avoiding the people and their houses who surly would kill and cook us if they knew we were trespassing, we noticed that the mountain was incredible 1. steep 2. wet 3. covered in thorns 4. cliff ridden. After moments of debate we dared ourselves to climb up saying.. it will be difficult but, we have time! its only 3pm! We have almost 6 hours till the amazing futbol game begins! Off we went and I am proud to say that we raced up the entire mountain in a mere 22.3 minutes. At the crest we could see the entire world and even Alcala the city we had just journeyed from! Better yet we could see a bridge off in the distance off the other side of the mountain and a game trail leading down. We galloped down the mountain side giddy as drugged kittens. As we traveled further down though, the going got tougher and the tough (us) wondered if we could get going…
We passed bottomless (seeming) pits, and slippery slopes and eventually we ended up walking miles on a 6 inch thick deer trail that was on an incredibly steep and wet slope between a 50 foot rock wall and the river. Nearly falling and being constantly scarred by briar bushes and thorn welding plants we trudged on like warriors. Finally after almost falling into the river 25623 times, we came into a clearing and found a normal person's path. We walked and walked feeling our hopes float higher and enjoying the beautiful foreign trees. Soon we came across a cave and we decided to have a look see. We explored the whole thing and even found remnants of what we thing are human bones…
I greatly regretted having watched the movie decent as we were waling through the pitch black cave with only Elijah’s camera to light our way, I admit that I was sure we would die…
We didn't though! Instead, we walked forward on the path and came to an abandoned old brick house that was covered in interesting spray paint, I climbed the fallen beams inside until I could touch the half caved in roof and we then left as we realized it could become a full caved in roof at any moment.
We walked on..
This time we heard rushing water and though we saw our beloved bridge, we ran through the brush, but no bridge was to be found… It was instead a deadly looking dam that was very impassable looking. We walked back disappointed and wondering if there was a bridge anywhere at all. I asked a fisherman who told us there was one but very far away and in the opposite direction… We could NOT walk that deer path again. I WOULDN'T! I thought. We started walking back anyway though but quickly saw a group of young people walking toward us. I asked them if they knew of another bridge and they DID! It turns out that these few fellow travelers were a rag tag group from Poland and they were the absolute friendliest people ever! We talked and laughed and walked and walked and learned all about interesting things involving Polish traffic laws and Spanish tapas bars and the towns of Gynst and Sopo and we became fast friends. Pedro and Mateos were their leaders and there was one other boy and two other girls whose names have escaped me. If it weren't for them we would never EVER have found our way out of the spanish countryside EVER! But they cordially led us to the road and would have given us a ride but they had no room at all. And so we walked more and more getting pretty lost in coming into Alcala (since we had somehow hiked out of the city) and finally getting home. The problem was… It was 7pm… it had taken us 4 long hours to escape the brambly paws of the spanish mountain. I had no idea how we were going to make it to Madrid in time for the Game. We had no time for shower or food, we grabbed our moneys and cameras and ran out the door. We failed at picking up our tickets because before mentioned magical machine was totally broken. So we just went to the bus stop and drank soda and complained about our aching legs and feet. We waited for 1.2 HOURS! before the bus came! ugghghgh we were sooooo late! So we rode the bus jumped off, jumped on the metro, jumped off and suddenly we were at the stadium struggling with the security about how to pick up our already purchased tickets. We killed the security, got the tickets went inside, I painted my face blue and white in honor of REAL Madrid and we watch almost the whole game! It was a glorious game and REAL Crushed the competition 4 to 0! It was so loud and so grand and just amazing. After I bought a jersey and am still wearing it now.
So we had to get home.
It was almost midnight so we knew the busses had stopped running. We ran to the metro but the crowd was terrible so we ran to another and hopped on it and went to the renfe station. We had never rode the renfe (the far away places train) and so we were a lil confused and somehow ended up getting some casi bad advice and stranded at the atocha station with no more renfe busses running. Some other dude told us that the busses WERE actually still running so we metro-ed over to the buss hub to find that he was a dirty liar… We were stranded in Madrid at 2 am.. Exhausted.. dirty… I had a mostly blue face… and we really didn't wanna sleep all night in on a park bench as I was only wearing a tshirt… and a jersey.
So we hailed a cab, (my first ever actually) and I spoke to him in beautiful flowery spanish and we shelled out 39 euros for a trip that usually cost us 6…
Anyway we were to cheap to have him drive us to our house… I have no idea why, so he dropped us off at the edge of town and we walked the rest of the way (2-3 miles) and then stumbled into the house and showered and died…
We did the math and best as we can tell from google maps and our endless calculations we hiked about 14 miles this day... I wish I could show everyone how I'm walking right now, its like I'm imitating a constipated penguin...
The end.. longest day ever.
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