The bus engine idles in the quiet of the morning, and I'm wedged against the window with my daypack on my knees. We're leaving Vielha's station at just after eight, and the driver is having a conversation in Aranese with a woman in the front row that I can almost follow now. The Val d'Aran has rewired something in my ear. Three weeks ago I couldn't have told you what Occitan sounded like. Now I'm catching words for tomorrow, for the pass, for the high country.
This is the day I've been building toward all week. The Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici National Park. The lakes and the granite ridges and, if I'm lucky, a proper shepherd's lunch in the mountains. The eclipse was the spectacle, the festival was the noise, but this is the quiet heart of the Pyrenees that I came here for.
The bus climbs out of the valley on the C-28, and the air gets that sharp, piney bite you only get above a thousand metres. We pass through Salardú and the turn for Baqueira-Beret, and I can see the ski lifts hanging motionless over green slopes. In winter this road is a river of four-by-fours and roof boxes. Today it's a scattering of cyclists and a couple of minivans. The resort is sleeping, but the valley below is wide awake.
I'm not going to lie to you about the logistics, because this is the part that trips people up. The park's main access points are at Espot and Boí, and getting to the trailheads without a car takes a little planning. There's a bus service that runs from Vielha to the park entrances in summer, but it only runs a few times a day, and the schedule changes year to year. I checked at the tourist office yesterday and wrote it all down on a scrap of paper that is now damp with sweat from my hand. Worth checking again when you go.
We get off at the turn for Espot, and I join a small queue at the park's summer shuttle that takes visitors up the valley road to the trailhead at Sant Maurici lake. This shuttle is the part you have to sort out ahead of time. It's not expensive, around nine or ten euros for the return, but it fills up by late morning, especially on a Saturday like today, the fifteenth of August. I booked my seat yesterday evening online, and I am extremely smug about it as the bus pulls away from the queue that's already forming.
The shuttle winds up a narrow road through beech and fir forest, and then the trees part and there it is. Lake Sant Maurici, long and dark and ringed by peaks that still have a skiff of snow on their north faces. The water is the colour of old slate with silver running over it. There's a stone causeway across the shallows, and a tiny Romanesque church, Sant Maurici, sitting right on the shore. I've seen photographs of this place for years. They didn't prepare me.
The trail starts at the far end of the lake and climbs in a series of long, patient switchbacks through dense forest. It's steep enough that I'm feeling my hamstrings by the third switchback, but the air is cool and there's a breeze off the lake. I pass a couple of French hikers who are taking a break on a boulder, sharing a bag of dried sausage and cheese. I nod and say bon dia, and they nod back, and it's one of those small, easy moments that makes this whole journey feel right.
After about an hour and a half, the trees thin out, and the trail opens onto a high valley with a string of lakes below me. This is the part I've been wanting to show you. Aigüestortes means "twisted waters" in Catalan, and you can see why. The streams between the lakes braid and curl across the meadow, silver ribbons on bright green grass. Marmots whistle somewhere up the slope. I stop for water and a handful of trail mix, and I calculate that this hike is costing me exactly nothing beyond the shuttle fare. The best thing in this valley is free, which is a sentence you don't get to say about much in Europe.
The plan is to push up to a refuge, a mountain hut that serves meals and hot drinks to hikers, and to have lunch there. I've been told the stew is simple and good, but I'm also carrying a backup sandwich because I've learned the hard way that mountain refuges sometimes run out of food by early afternoon. I sit for a moment on a rock by the edge of a small tarn, not the lake you can see on the map, just one of the hundreds that don't have names, and I just watch the light change on the water for a while.
The refuge finally comes into view, a low stone building with a slate roof and a small terrace with a few wooden tables. It's busy, but not unpleasantly so. I order a bowl of the shepherd's stew, which is lamb and potato and a little bit of carrot in a broth that tastes like the whole mountain, and a piece of bread and a glass of red wine. The whole thing comes to about fourteen euros, which feels like a bargain for the location and the effort it took to get here.
I eat slowly, because this is the longest sobremesa of my trip so far, and I want it to last. Sobremesa, that beautiful Spanish habit of staying at the table long after the plates are cleared, talking and digesting and watching the world go by. Here, the world is a dozen hikers in muddy boots, a pair of shepherds who are drinking coffee and arguing good-naturedly about sheep, and a family from Zaragoza whose kids are trying to feed bread crusts to a very patient dog.
The sunlight through the window is doing something lovely to the stone floor. I pull out my notebook and tot up the day so far: bus from Vielha, about four euros. Park shuttle, around ten. Lunch, fourteen. A coffee after the meal, two and a half. That's roughly thirty euros, call it thirty-two with the bits and pieces, for a full day in one of Spain's most spectacular national parks. Compare that to a single skip-the-line ticket for a Gaudí building in Barcelona, and you'll see where the real value is.
I don't want to leave, but the shuttle schedule is a tyrant, and if I miss the last one down I'm walking to Espot in the dark. The hike back down is quicker than the climb, and my knees complain a little, but the light has shifted and the lakes are a different kind of beautiful in the afternoon. I see a golden eagle circling high above the ridge, and I stand still until it disappears behind a peak. That alone was worth the price of everything.
Back at the Espot turn, I have about forty minutes until the bus to Vielha arrives, so I do what you always do in these mountain towns: I find a bench in the shade and watch the people. A group of German hikers are comparing maps. Two women in bright yellow rain jackets are arguing about whether to have one more beer. A man with a small dog is teaching it to sit, and the dog is having none of it. It's a small, ordinary scene, and I sit there and let it wash over me.
The bus back to Vielha is nearly empty. I sit on the right side to watch the Nere river rush past below the road, green and white and loud. Somewhere around Salardú I doze off, and when I wake we're rounding the bend into the valley and I can see the slate roofs of Vielha below, and the church tower, and the whole town laid out in the late afternoon light like a painting.
I'm back at the apartment by six, and I have the good sense to drop my pack and walk out again before my legs can stiffen. I'm meeting a friend of a friend, a local shepherd who's been doing summer grazing in the high pastures for most of his life. We're having dinner at a place in the old town, near Plaça d'Era Glèisa, a restaurant whose name I've been given but which I'll describe as "a stone-walled place on a side street" because I don't want to mislead you with an exact name I haven't verified. What I can tell you is that the menu is short and the wine is local, and the owner greets my friend by name.
He's a quiet man, this shepherd, with a face like a nut and hands that have seen a lot of weather. We talk about the summer, and the sheep, and the bears, because every conversation in this valley eventually turns to bears. He tells me that the brown bear population is slowly growing on the French side of the border, and that the Pyrenean chamois, the isard, are doing well. He also tells me, with a dry laugh, that the shepherds now have to check their flock twice a day where they used to check once. Progress, of a sort.
He orders for both of us, and the food that comes is the kind of food you only get when a shepherd orders for you. A plate of mountain cheese, hard and salty and the colour of straw. A hearty bean and sausage casserole. Bread that's still warm from the oven. A bottle of a red wine from the Costers del Segre that he calls "the valley's best kept secret", and which, at about nine euros a bottle, might just be exactly that. We eat slowly, and we talk about nothing much, and the noise of the town's evening traffic drifts through the open window like a distant tide.
The bill arrives, and it's a surprise for a small town dinner: about thirty-eight euros for two plates, a bottle, and a couple of coffees. I'm not going to tell you which restaurant it is, because I didn't get a chance to verify the name, but I will say this: in the high season, you can pay double that in a tourist trap with a view of the cathedral. This was the real thing, the kind of meal that makes you understand why the Spanish build their whole life around the table.
After dinner, we walk through the old town, and the streets are quieter than they were during the festival. The big feasts of the Festa Major have come and gone. What's left is just a summer evening in a small mountain capital, and I can hear the river from the bridge over the Nere, and a dog barking somewhere up in Gausac, and a few people talking in low voices outside a bar. The sky is the deep blue that comes just before the stars come out.
I think about the day, and what a day it was. A bus, a shuttle, a long climb, a bowl of stew, a golden eagle, a shepherd's dinner, and a conversation that connected me to this valley in a way that no guidebook could. And the whole thing, from the first ticket to the last coffee, cost me somewhere in the neighbourhood of seventy euros, all told. That's less than I spent on a single mediocre meal in Barcelona, and I'll remember this day for the rest of my life.
I say goodnight to my friend on the corner by the church, and I walk home up the hill. The apartment is dim and quiet, and I can hear the town settling. I put the kettle on, and I stand at the window looking out at the dark bulk of the mountains, and I feel very lucky to be alive, and to be here, and to be able to tell you about it.
Before I forget, everything I talked about today, the bus schedules, the shuttle booking, the refuge, the shepherd's table, it's all in the episode notes, along with a few other tips for the high country. That's your map. I'm just the voice.
I'm Mateo, and I'll be right here in Vielha e Mijaran for a few more days before I head west. Hasta mañana.