We enjoyed our trip to the Basque Country of Northern Spain. We rented a house in Etxalar, Navarra for the week. The village of Etxalar is tiny, and our house was even more remote. Our little Renault Kangoo car had to navigate some dicy back roads and hills to get to the house. The house itself was awesome: perched on a hilltop looking out over the village below. Here’s a picture from the porch:
Here’s an example of the types of houses in the village taken from a walk into town:
The town is small enough that people tend to be out a lot walking, to the little store, the tavern, the church, and the playground. Very sociable people everywhere we ventured.
From our base, we took day trips to see the local Basque Country sights. We learned pretty quickly that driving along the single lane mountain roads could be kind of hairy. On a 10 kilometer drive to France we only seemed to meet other cars on blind corners which required some precision driving to avoid collision or driving off a cliff. Suffice it to say there were some tense moments on that scenic drive. Here’s our car for the three weeks while we’re driving here in Spain:
Our day trip to France took us to Hendaye, a little beach town in France where the kids swam in the ocean we bumbled along with our total lack of french language skills. We got along better in Spanish there since folks seemed to know that language better than English.
We visited some natural caves in the region that allegedly were used as hiding places by witches in the 1600s.
We also spent two days in San Sebastián to enjoy the beach, eat tapas, and walk around this colorful seaside town. They have an amazing aquarium with a glass tunnel you walk through that makes it truly feel like you’re in the water with the fish. Having a large shark swim up and over you was pretty cool.
The day trip we didn’t take was to Pamplona. Part of our reason for going to this region of Spain was to visit Pamplona, but the festival of San Fermin was taking place during the week we were there. Known for the crazy running of the bulls, we learned from the locals that the town during festival is a bad idea. Too many people, most of them drunk, didn’t sound like a great atmosphere to us. Scenes from the bedlam were on the local news channel at the village pub, and the folks there at the bar just shook their heads, muttering “Loco! Mucho loco!” We’ll have to see that town again some other time.
The only downside to our week in the Basque Country was the weather. It rained most days we were there, which made us feel right at home, but shortened some of our excursions. I think the rain in this area is what makes everything so vividly green. It felt a lot like the Northwest.
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I read that Bill Hillman, author of a book on How to Survive the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, was gored in the leg this year. It does sound like a lot of insanity! The place you stayed looks gorgeous!