travel

My dog is a big hit with some of my students. One in particular asked me when his birthday was a few days. We found him on the street near in a small town near Colca Canyon in Peru, so we’re not really sure of his exact age. Not wanting to confuse her, I told her the day we found her, which happens to be two years ago today. She replied that she hoped all his friends would come his birthday party, but “the little green men are everywhere and might get them sick”. Smart girl.

We had arrived back in Cabanaconde from a grueling hike down the canyon the previous day and we saw him again; this skeleton of a puppy that had a camouflage dog shirt on that covered his patchy brindle fur and rib cage, paint or something else stuck to his nose, and head bowed.

We didn’t plan to bring him back with us. First, we just wanted to get him food. After buying some tuna and talking with a store owner in the plaza, we confirmed he didn’t have a home anymore. He slept soundly in our hostel room, hardly making a sound and smelling like garbage. We brought him back to Arequipa for a veterinarian visit. The journey included hitchhiking a ride on a semi-trailer truck out of town to the Andean condor spot, another hitch on a moto with a small cargo bed on the back, and finally a bus. We learned there that he had moquillo, canine distemper and had no more plaque on his teeth, hence his stinky breath.

Since the beginning, Alqo has always been a road warrior. There’s a tiny space down by our feet that he can fit in? Done. A long walk around town to find a “dog-friendly” hostel? Okay, cool.

He enriched our trip by making us slow down, getting into extraordinary situations, and sleeping in interesting places. Instead of ending in Argentina, we stayed put in Peru for the next five months.

Happy adoption day, Alqo. I think you are lucky to have bumped into two bleeding hearts animal lovers back in that plaza, but we are even luckier to have you as our animal companion on these three crazy continents, making us laugh at your stinky breath yawns, your yoga positions, and how much you love to run when we go to the monte.

I haven’t felt ‘in the spirit’ during the holidays for a long time. Between Thanksgiving and New Years is usually the time for coming home to visit and get together with family. I’ve been away or unable to come back to California. I spent my winter vacations in Muslim-majority countries like Guinea, Morocco, and Turkey, or on the road in hostels in Sierra Leone or Colombia. Combined with my more recent uneasiness of the excessive consumption habits and waste between Black Friday and New Years and no real commitment to the Christian component of the holiday, you probably don’t want me anywhere near your holiday party.

We do our own thing wherever we are. And recently that has turned into hiking on the holidays.

When Patricia and I were in the States for the summer, I used a hiking app called AllTrails to find great loop routes that were suitable for dogs and a manageable length. But In Europe, there were fewer routes in AllTrails’ database. So I was happy to find Wikiloc, a similar community-added route database and phone app. It’s also made in Girona, Spain! Apps like this allow you to search for and record your movement to upload them for others, adding waypoints, photos, descriptions, and data (elevation change, distance, etc.).

Patricia has been taking a basketweaving course from the Escola de Cestería in Santa Mariña de Augas Santas, a village of around 50 people to the north of Allariz with an immense church. She told me how beautiful the village was, so we looked up a hike that started there on Wikiloc and took off.

So many things about Galicia impress me. But the opportunity to easily encounter so much history in nature always leaves me dumbfounded. Spain is a living museum. And the national, regional, and municipal governments of the country, as well as private foundations and local initiatives, preserve their historical and cultural heritages. In the short hike, we encountered the unfinished Basilica da Asunción built above a crypt named Os Fornos.

It is here that the cult of Santa Mariña de Augas Santas started, a Roman teenager martyred for her belief in Christianity. From what I can understand, Santa Mariña caught the attention of the Roman prefect Olibrio, who fell in love with her, and punished her severely for his unrequited affections. She was miraculously healed from her injuries during her torture. Then, they tried to burn her alive down in the crypt of Os Fornos before San Pedro rescued her.

A short distance away from the Basilica and Os Fornos, we found a tree surrounded by a small stone wall and a pool of water. This is the tree under which Santa Mariña was beheaded and martyred for her Christian faith. Supposedly a spring of water welled up from the earth where her head hit the ground.

We continued the trail and looped around a bit to the small hamlet of Armeá, where a local man discovered an “enigmatic” archaeological site. Specialists hypothesize it would’ve been a big lodging for people in the first century arriving from the south of Roman Gallaecia.

Christmas Day: O San Salvador and Roimelo

On Christmas Day, we didn’t plan any hike. But a short walk up the monte to stretch our legs turned into a trip to O San Salvador, a small village up the road. The village is nestled in a small, rocky valley. Like many depopulated places, it has a church that seems enormous relative to its current population. We didn’t meet anyone who lived there, and being Christmas Day, we didn’t want to bother anyone either. I checked the census data when we returned home and in 2017, there were three inhabitants.

A few meters from the village is a path heading to a castelo. Arriving at the top of the hill, we saw some ruins but left quickly as we heard the holiday-enjoying hunters and dogs close, which usually makes us nervous with the dog.

After we arrived back home, we bought a YogurtNest, a yogurt maker and slow cooker that doesn’t require any electricity, as our gift to each other and the house. Note: The Concello de Allariz (town hall) has a tourism page about both Santa Mariña de Augas Santas and surrounding sights and O San Salvador.