Last Day in Extremadura

On our last day in Extremadura, Janet opted to walk a portion of the Camino from our camping to the next albergue in Galisteo, a 6 km walk away.

Leo and I followed a route to the Sierra de la Gata.  We left the camping in Riolobos and drove through the neighboring farms.  They all had tobacco drying sheds, but the tobacco industry must be suffering (despite still many smokers) because many of the sheds are being plastered over to cover the ventilation, presumably for other uses.

We stopped at a reservoir but there were not many birds there, then drove by small holdings with many stone walls and small huts made of many stones.

Then we headed up into the mountains, first through an area of terraced olive orchards.  All the olive trees had been pollarded, cut back to dtumpd thrn allowed to sprout back, something I hadn't seen anywhere else in Spain.  Next through pine forests.  Deforested areas like the hill shown here were being replanted with pines.

We took a windy, single-layer switchback camino into the mountains, stopping at a Roman road that led up the Valley of the River Ambroz.

Here the heathers were growing taller than me between the pines.

Most of the road was dirt but there was a portion where the old stones remained, and we could se how it had been constructed and shored up along the edge.

We didn't get far though before it started to rain, so we returned to the road and drove until we we reached the pass.  There the road led into Portugal so we turned around as we were not a lower to leave the country in our rental car and drove back to find a place for lunch.

In the town of Pozuelo de Zarzon, we stopped at  a taberna for the menu del dia,  which we had to decipher from our waitress's handwriting and her patient explanations (in Spanish).  It's always a gamble, but it all turned out well, we had a fine meal:  mushroom omelet and medallions of pork with cheese sauce and French fried potatoes, flan (custard) for dessert for Leo; and asparagus in vinaigrette and mystery fish fillet (this turned out to be very dense and chicken like - tuna? - and delicious), torta mandarina (orange torte) for Connie.  Nothing was too over salted and bread, water, wine , and coffee were included.  15€ each ($22).

We thought this was a pretty classy joint, but then I went to use the servicios - no toilet seats!

We returned to our apartment to find the sun had come out, and spent the evening basking in the warmth and packing in preparation of returning our rental car tomorrow.