Day 17: Lost again

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Today was my day to pick a hike and boy did I botch it. Last night we looking into a 7 mile hike around a couple lakes when I found la pic del madre which was a 3 hour hike up into the clouds. The benefits were it was easy to find the city it was in, the hike was shorter and would be more physically demanding because of the climbing aspect. We headed out thinking we were in great shape to have another fantastic hike. That should have been the first clue. We reached the city with no problem except a couple near cliff swiping due to narrow roads, a cow who couldn't be bothered to move out of the middle of the road, and radio stations not liking the mountain climb. We went to the post office to get directions to the start of the hike, which we followed to the best of our ability which meant we needed to ask another local for directions and then had to make one more stop to the information/librarian for final clarification. None spoke very fluent english but we found a trailhead. Shortly in the trail came to a vee. We took the more rugged one and quickly concluded they were trying to turn this area into a national trail system as many trails had trees freshly chopped, many unfinished paths leading to nowhere and few trail markings. We turned back and started up the other vee side. After about 45 minutes of going up and accepting the reality we were on the wrong trail and not going to be able to reach the top of this one before needing to turn back, we gave ourselves 15 more minutes to hike. Suddenly, I came to a sudden stop because out in front of us a baby bear cub sprinted across the path. It was quickly followed a black wolf chasing it. Never have I ever seen Shelby about face so quickly. External processing of little red riding hood, how would you defend yourself and where there is a baby cub a mama is not far behind were enough to keep the pace up and me chuckling pretty good all the way back to the car. In hindsight, I wish we'd have just taken the trail paths along the main road. Searching without a lick of French and a good map was too high an expectation.

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