That Time I Went To Riglos–Or, The Hike From Hell…

This past Sunday, I had the opportunity to take a little excursion to Huesca–Aragón’s northernmost province–with a group of Erasmus students based in Zaragoza!!…We had two main destinations: the first was the 11-century castle known as Loarre (which I’ll elaborate on in a future post!!); the second was a little pueblico known as Riglos…

Located some 28 miles to the northeast of the City of Huesca, Riglos is one of those sleepy little villages that one tends to find around the Pyrenees (as expected!!)…

However, unbeknownst to me, the main attraction of this stop on our trip wasn’t Riglos itself–but rather, the Camino Azúl (The Blue Path), a hiking trail along the cliff side surrounding Riglos that overlooks Los Mallos, which are a series of rock formations that are very popular with climbers…

Now, I’ll admit that I’m not THAT outdoorsy of a girl, but I do find the occasional walk through nature quite pleasant…In this instance, however, the route we took was nowhere NEAR “pleasant”…While 4.8 km. isn’t that bad of a distance, the fact that the path was so steeply inclined and uneven, with so many loose rocks and stones that you literally had to climb over or stoop down to reach, made it hard to keep your footing and balance–indeed, many of us (myself included) slipped or tripped at least once…Considering that there are no fences or rails on this trail, it was also quite likely that one of us could have fell off the side of the cliff, we could have easily been severely injured (or outright killed)…Thank God it didn’t rain that day–otherwise, we REALLY would have been S.O.L.!!…

Granted, I know Spanish efficiency isn’t really a thing, but SOMEBODY should have did some more research–NOBODY was expecting it to be that strenuous: Instead of 2 hours, it took 4 1/2…Add to the fact that I wasn’t prepared for this AT ALL, I didn’t bring any proper fuel–namely, granola and water…I was an overheated, dehydrated mess, but thankfully, a really nice boy from Germany and a girl from France (Jan and Gaëtane) became my support team, giving my H20, holding my hands, and guiding me along the way when I really needed help…Just goes to show how one can find kindness and decency in people from every part of the globe, :-)…

Well, at least I got some really nice fotitos!!…

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