We had a brief thunderstorm last night, before we went to sleep. It lasted all of 5 minutes but it was still a great temperature from then on.
We woke up and it was actually cold. I put a fleece on, for what felt like the first time that I wasn’t also doing laundry where it is the only top I have to wear. The weather was supposed to be cooler for the next 3 days.
We had a short climb to do and then a long descent into the town of Salardu. Not long into our descent, we started seeing other hikers coming up, mostly for the day. As we descended they increased quite a bit. It must be a popular place to visit. We were briefly in some new national park, Parc Nacional de Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici, so perhaps that was the reason.
We ended our hike with a long descent on a road into town. The road was glorious: it was so smooth and it was very easy walking. It was a very welcome change to our usual slog over rocky terrain. At one point a guy in a taxi pulled over to tell us that there was a trail we could take (as if I didn’t have a map) and he thought it was better because it was much less dusty. Yeah no thanks buddy, I’ll take the road.
We were unsure about our plan for Salardu. Initially, we wanted to try and do all our chores and hike out the same day. As we got closer to town, we found out Simon was staying in Vielha, and it was supposed to rain quite a bit in the afternoon. Twist my arm. I found us a hotel while we walked in. In Salardu, it was a 15 minute hitch down the road to Vielha, my favorite town on trail so far. Everything was so close together, the grocery store was huge, and they had a great laundromat. Our hotel ended up far exceeding our expectations. I did a bit of searching around, but as soon as we stepped into the lobby that had soft furnishings, wood finishes and gentle music playing, I instantly became aware of how dirty we were. I felt really out of place. Thankfully, we were allowed to check in early and we went up and took showers straight away. Since we know soap can be hard to come by, I am now carrying a bar of soap with me. In this case, the hotel had it, but not every place we stay at does.
After we showered, we put on our long clothes and bagged everything else to take the laundromat. The skies were definitely dark, but it wasn’t raining just yet. We started our laundry, set a timer, and walked to the grocery store to do our shopping. We needed to buy 5 days of food for our next section. We also bought some snacks for the afternoon and breakfast for the next morning. We briefly met Simon in the supermarket, but we all had to buy our food. We would catch up over dinner.
On our way back with our food and laundry delicately balanced in our arms, it started to rain. We got back and collapsed on the beds, very satisfied that our chores were done and we could relax for the rest of the day. We called our parents and the rain began to pour down. I was glad we were inside. It was so easy and comfortable.
We had dinner with Simon by going to 3 different restaurants and ordering a bit at each. The pinchos (tapas) were excellent. We had a lot of fun catching up with Simon. We also learned this next section would be his last, before he left to meet his friend to view the eclipse in the path of totality, somewhere in Spain on August 12. Hopefully we’ll get to see him again before he leaves. We went back to our room and crashed, hard.