An Arduous and Reckless Journey

So, my friend Stephanie and I set out this morning for what we thought would be a nice hike in the national park, Monfragüe. We took the train for an hour, looking forward to exploring the outdoors. When we arrived, the conductor asked us if we really wanted to get out at that stop. We said "yes..." not understanding why he seemed so surprised. Once the train had departed, we asked him how to get to the park. He said it was 15 kilometers (nearly 10 miles) away but that we could walk to a campground and maybe rent bikes there. So after trekking through a long path in the middle of nowhere, where there were just as many horses as people (not many of either), we got to the campground. When the receptionist said there were four bikes available to rent, we were quite relieved. But then, of course, it turned out that three out of the four had punctured tires. She called a taxi for us, but it would have cost us 60 euros, which seemed absolutely absurd. At this point, the park started to seem like this faraway nowhere land that we'd never reach in this lifetime. But there were still seven hours til our train back, and we weren't prepared to spend the day sitting in the station. So we began to walk and did something I thought I'd never do: put up our thumbs every time a car came into sight (which wasn't often, as no one seems to live in Monfragüe). We planned that if anyone questionable stopped for us, an imaginary friend would call my cell phone and tell me he/she could give us a ride, and we'd therefore avoid having to drive with creeps. When car after car went past without noticing our plight, we started to lose all hope. But then, at last, one came to our salvation. It was unfortunately a man (I would have preferred a woman) but he looked clean-cut and said he was a classical music teacher, so I tried my best to not be too anxious. He turned out to be fine in the end. I risked my life to go to the park, but it was beautiful and worth it. Luckily, on the way back, we got rides with three park rangers who were going towards the train station. So we got to go to the faraway, fantasy park that we thought would never be ours to see, and it all worked out in the end.

Yesterday I had a much less eventful day seeing Trujillo, a small city in the province of Cáceres. Although it's home to only 9,000 people, it had quite an impressive array of palaces, castles, and handsome views. I won't bore you describing it further, but it was quite a pretty city. And home to Pizarro, the dear conqueror of Peru! Gotta love him...

And two days ago I moved into my new apartment. It's infinitely cleaner and more appealing than the other one. My roommates are youngins (college Freshmen!). They all went home for the weekend but two out of the three are now back so we chatted a bit, and they seem nice, although I'm gonna need to get used to how fast they talk.

I would post pictures of Trujillo and the park, but I haven't uploaded them to my computer yet, and I'm feeling way too tired and lazy after hiking so much today. But later I'll be sure to post them on Facebook, and you can check them out if you want! (Although no one ever gets that excited about looking at other peoples' landscape/architecture pictures).

P.S. Don't worry, Mum. I don't plan to hitchhike ever again!