Soportújar: Crowds

We could hardly tear ourselves away from Casa Walhalla this morning. Ramón and Michelle kindly let us stay an extra hour and came over at noon to say goodbye, bringing a present with them – a Walhalla mug! And to top it all off, Ramón drove us to Soportújar so we wouldn’t have to walk on the busy road that has no shoulder.

We knew from our walk here to get groceries last week that Soportújar was going to be busy, but what a shock to see exactly how busy. Part of the crowds may be due to Semana Santa, but it was like this last week also. There’s only one narrow road to get into the village, and it had traffic jams at every turn as well as cars parked in each available spot. People are drawn here by the village’s promotion of itself as a “lugar de Embrujo”, a place of enchantment/witchcraft. Every other store is a souvenir shop with crowds looking at T-shirts decorated with witches and kids begging their parents to buy them a broom to ride on. There is one tiny combo souvenir shop/grocery store that carries frozen vegetables, canned tuna, and milk – all of which we were grateful for. Plus the bakery van was here and we were able to get bread. The pharmacy is still closed.

Our apartment is perfectly adequate as a base for walking, but can’t compare with the joy we felt at last week’s casa, so much a part of the history of the last thousand years here.

But I bet when we are out on the trail tomorrow, things will look different. For one thing, we likely won’t meet a single person. In fact, in all our days of exploring last month, we only met two other people out walking - the Irish-Australian couple on the Gr 7 near Cáñar.Read more