La Playa de Covachos y Los Picos de Europa

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Hola a todos!!

So far since arriving in Santander I've gone on two very fun day trips within Cantabria with a friend that my roommate Alissa made last year in Santander. Javi is a "santanderino" (from Santander) and our second week in Santander Alissa and I went with him and some of his friends to a beach near Santander called Playa de Covachos. Much more used to flat coastlines, like most of the coastline in the eastern United States, I'm continually awed by the rocky and cliff-lined coasts in northern Spain. This beach was a cove surrounded by cliffs and I thought it was gorgeous. We went in the afternoon and stayed for a few hours. It was a windy day and I decided not to swim but we did walk out to the rocky outcropping at the head of the cove and I liked how the waves were coming from opposite directions (from the open ocean and from the cove) and converging on the part of the beach slowly disappearing with the incoming tide. It was a really relaxing afternoon which came at a good time because at that point Alissa and I were still looking for an apartment and needed a break from walking around the city.

Later on, about 2 weeks ago I went with Javi and his friends to spend a Sunday hiking in the Picos de Europa, a well known national park in Cantabria. On Sunday morning Javi picked me up at 9:30 and we met up with the rest of his friends and headed southwest to the mountains. Potes is a well known town in Cantabria that is located near the national park and we made a stop there around 11:30 to buy some bread and more water before the hike. It has a beautiful historic center with winding medieval streets and I was able to walk around a little bit and enjoy its charm before we left.

We made our way to a town called Fuente Dé in the Picos de Europa where you can ride a cable car up over 700 meters and then either begin hiking or just enjoy the view from the top where there is a bar. The price to ride the cable car was fairly expensive (15 euros roundtrip) but it was definitely worth the thrill of being lifted up so high and the convenience of being able to start a hike from there rather than from the very bottom. We enjoyed the spectacular views from the area around the bar for a bit and then finally started hiking around 2 pm. We were above the tree line and the landscape was extremely barren. All you could see were white rocks and peaks everywhere. The only wildlife I saw during the hike were a few mountain goats and some birds. The trail we followed was extremely rocky most of the way which made the hike pretty tedious but it was a beautiful sunny day with hardly a cloud in the sky and there was a nice cool breeze so we didn't work up too much of a sweat even on the really steep areas of the hike. We finally made it to an area where you had a spectacular view of the ocean and of another mountain range in the distance because the skies were so clear! It was about 4:15 and we hadn't yet stopped to eat lunch so we were all starving and could finally rest and eat there.

After lunch we began the descent back the way we had come and returned to the cable car around 6:30. We came across some more mountain goats that were hanging around near the bar and these ones were so tame you could pet them and sit next to them without a problem. We watched some of the cable cars descending and from above it looked like they were dropping extremely fast as soon as they left the top station. I was a bit nervous about going down but in the end once we were inside the car the speed of the trip down didn't seem any different from the trip up. On the way back to Santander we stopped in a really small pueblo called Lon that had a bar that Javi was familiar with. We sipped shots of Crema de Orujo which is a liquor produced in Cantabria. There are many types of the liquor (plain, cream, honey, coffee, apricot, peach, blackberry, fig, etc) and the non cream ones are particularly strong. I was familiar with Crema de Orujo (which tastes similar to Bailey's) but I also tried Crema de Orujo de Melón, a creamy melon flavored variety and it was absolutely delicious. I made a mental note that I would look to buy it in the supermarket back in Santander. We finally returned to Santander around 10 pm. It was a long day and I was exhausted after the hike and the long car ride but I had a wonderful time! Javi is such a nice guy and I'm very happy that I've been able to meet him and his friends through my roommate Alissa.

Hasta luego,
Dana

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