Sunday 9th September Esaba to Zuriza

"En las montañas, hay que ir despacito". (with mountains, take them slowly). Sage advice to me from an old basque shepherd. Today we left the alpine pastures and high hills of Navarra and entered the hard rock, steep peaks of Aragon. From here on, it is the very big mountains of the Pyrenees. We left Esaba after a day's rest and straight into a hard climb to the top of Peña Ezcaurri (2047 mtrs see foto). After grinding up 1000 mtrs over 9 kms, at first through forest then pushing our way up above the treeline into the high country, we were faced with a 300 metre high wall of rock that we had to go up and over. Unbelievable. We could see it from quite a distance and I was thinking the whole time as we got closer that "surely we won't have to climb over THAT!!" As the pommie twit writer of our guide book states "One can hardly believe that one is expected to surmount this obstacle". It took me an hour and a half of hand over hand vertical climbing to cover the 300 meters. As always the 20 kilo pack on my back was answering the call of gravity the whole way. Chris J and B were a bit faster than me so it was an incredible feeling to finally pull myself over the edge of the last section and see their smiling faces looking down at me. It was exhilirating and I was tired but the view from the top was breathtaking. We had been seeing large vultures (2 metre wingspan) the whole walk, now we were looking down on them as they floated on the thermal air currents, their giant wings extended and motionless as they swooped up and down. After having a good look around the top and checking out all the different views, it was a 900 metre near vertical drop to Zuriza on the steepest downhill track so far. I was really glad to have my walking poles because with the weight of the pack, once you started moving downhill momentum starts to take over and if you can't slow yourself down in the difficult gravelly and rocky terrain then you would end up going for the tumble of a lifetime which would not probably end for another 100 meters of vertical drop and a few broken limbs as a souvenir of the trip. By placing the poles in front of me I was able to both slow my descent and, with the more vertical drops off the edge of rock steps, reduce the shock of the landing taking away the risk of damage to knees and ankles. We come back down into forest but the sheer verticality of the track never diminished. Finally we came out onto the main road and after about 500 metres walking on tarseal with the soles of our feet burning from the friction of the climb down, we arrived at the camping ground of Zuriza. Like all establishments of this type in Spain, sensibly they have a bar. We availed ourselves of its services and downed several cold beers in succession. Feeling quite elated with the day's events we set up the tents and had a hot shower followed by a hot dinner in the camping ground bar / restaurant. Sleeping was not a problem.