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Published: April 23rd 2017
I spent Easter break doing a tour of Asturias, the province to the east of Galicia. The whole year, I’d hoped to visit Asturias and Cantabria. I didn’t make it to Cantabria because once I started investigating Asturias, I found that there was so much to see there.
Challenges of the trip: I was going to be traveling alone. And without a car. Traveling alone at this point isn’t weird for me. I’m getting used to having total autonomy and not feeling weird about being alone. It is hard to plan hiking or to go to more rural places without knowing how safe it is, though. Traveling alone means you have to be a lot more prepared than if you were traveling with someone. If you’re with someone, generally your attitude is like, “No problem. We can figure it out. One of us can watch bags and the other can go ask.” Alone, you miss a bus and you feel a lot more stressed out and without a pal.
Now, the challenge of traveling without a car is generally okay in Spain, as long as you want to go to cities. But once you decide
you want to do hiking routes in mountainous national parks, you run into some issues. There tend to be taxis, but those are expensive. Luckily for me, the week before Easter (called Semana Santa) is a vacation week for many Spanish people. Because most of the places I wanted to go are popular with Spanish tourists, they actually ended up having Alsa bus service for that week (it also runs in peak summer season, but outside of those times, you’re going to be out of luck). Normally, between Cangas de Onís and the sanctuary at Covadonga there is a bus a few times a day, but during Semana Santa it’s every 15-ish minutes and it goes all the way up to the lakes because car access is forbidden then. From Las Arenas de Cabrales, there is normally no bus service to Poncebos, whereas during Semana Santa buses ran every 30 minutes during daylight hours.
Combine being alone and taking public transportation to the middle of nowhere, and I was anxious before the trip started. I also, despite searching everywhere, didn’t know ahead of time that there was bus service to Poncebos and had decided to
take a taxi there.
One more note about public transportation in Asturias—you might want to check on the different trains. There are regular RENFE trains, there are Cercanías, and there are FEVE trains. You have to search different parts of the RENFE website to find the different schedules. You can’t just search on the regular RENFE home page—the schedules won’t show up for Cercanías or FEVE! Also, just as in Galicia, if there is no way for you to buy a ticket at the FEVE train platform (no one there or no ticket machine), you can just buy it from the conductor on board.
I started out with a 10am Alsa bus from La Coruña to Oviedo. Once in Oviedo, I walked up the street to the train station, eventually found out that FEVE tickets are sold on the second floor, apart from the regular RENFE and Cercanías tickets, and caught the FEVE to Llanes.
Llanes is a town on the northeastern Asturian coast. There are seemingly lots of charming Asturian coastal villages and towns. I ended up deciding on Llanes because there was a cheap hostel there, and the town
and coast were close to the train station. Be careful because some towns are actually a kilometer from their corresponding stations. Nearby Ribadasella would have been my backup choice.
I had around 3 hours of daylight to wander the town. It was bigger than I expected, and also had more tourists than I expected. I started by walking part of a seaside path that follows cliffs to the town center. The marina, with artist-painted concrete cubes, was my next stop. Then I wandered through the bustling center, past tourist shops and restaurants, to the lighthouse (not worth it; also had painted “Locals Only” in English which shocked me . . . ).
A tour of mostly abandoned old mansions built by returnees from the New World was my next step. One of those is where the horror movie “The Orphanage” was filmed. It was surrounded by wrought iron gates and had a white camper van sitting in a field nearby. Fittingly creepy. Finally, I walked back through the old city, where there was a tower and a part of a city wall remaining.
Overall, I really liked Llanes. It was well-maintained,
Llanes Beach
Such clear, calm water!had a decent amount to see for a small town, and seemed to have a lot of options for eating. Three hours was a good amount of time for exploring. Add more time for the beach, eating, or shopping.
The next morning, I took a FEVE train to Arriondas. Although a worker showed up in the train station 15 minutes before the train came, he just told me to buy a ticket on the train. I had the “luck” of meeting a colorful character at the station. He encountered me in the waiting room, where I suppose it was his phone on the charger. I just assumed he was hanging out at the station with his buddies at 9am drinking beer, as people do, and came into the waiting room to check on his phone. He kindly told me I could buy a ticket on the train. I thanked him and went to the platform, thinking that was that.
But no, there’s a type of person that likes to just chat with any person they happen to run into, and I suppose alcohol exacerbates this. When we got on board the train he sat
in the seat in front of me. At first, he started talking at his neighbor, an older man (trying to) read the newspaper. Finally, that guy frustratedly got up and moved, just because the drunk nomad was bothering him so much by trying to converse with him.
So of course, he turned his attention to me, peering back through the seat gap and randomly saying things to me, despite that I was enjoying the time to podcast-binge with headphones in. He felt the need to warn me seriously about the very dangerous Romani mafias in the next town where I needed to change transportation. I was only kind of half-listening, and got that the last time he was there, he saw an old woman die in the street (I’m guessing in some way related to these supposed gangs.) It’s cool if one traveler seriously thinks a place is dangerous and wants to warn another one, but the number of times he told me to be careful started to annoy me, especially after I told him I was only going there to catch a bus.
Man is it frustrating to have to deal with people
who are so self-unaware. Like to have to placate them to be polite instead of them realizing on their own that you just don’t care. I don’t care if you traveled to Germany, I don’t care that you think American women are attractive until they get old and fat, I don’t care if you are “friends” with all the train workers all over Asturias because you’ve been traveling there continuously for the last 24 years. I don’t care. He luckily got off after 20 minutes of continuous conversation.
I made it to Arriondas, where I had to catch an Alsa bus. I had some time, so I walked around the town a bit. I saw no signs of the “dangerous” non-accepted-after-400-plus-years-in-the-country ethnic group. It’s basically a small town that has a river running through it. They seem to have a lot of canoe/kayak rental businesses, kind of a Saltsburg kind of place with the same level of charm (some).
I survived sleepy Arriondas(!) and caught a bus to Cangas de Onís. Seriously, it would be much easier if I had a car (that day I took a train, bus, bus, bus, bus). At the
Cangas de Onís bus station, there was a ticket window specifically for the special bus service to the Covadonga Lakes. I bought an unlimited day pass for 8 euros, which turned out to be worth it.
When I got on the bus, I (luckily) asked the driver to let me off at my hostel, which was in between Cangas and Covadonga (in a village called La Riera). After a bit of confusion, I realized that it was in fact my hostel that had a sign that said the guy was out until 7pm and to send him a WhatsApp. While waiting for him to reply, I took advantage of the sunny weather and picnic table to eat my lunch. I can’t deny that it’s worrying when you show up to your hostel in the middle of nowhere, and it’s closed, but the spot was so serene that I didn’t stress about it. Luckily, the guy did call me and describe how I could get in and what bed I could have so that I could drop off my bag and go to Covadonga.
I successfully hailed (yes, you have to hail buses in the
middle of nowhere so that they stop for you even when you’re at the bus stop. Just do it to be safe.) the bus headed for the Lakes of Covadonga. The bus passes through the little touristy village where there is a famous sanctuary, then ascends the narrow windy path through the mountains, some with snow on the tops. I really didn’t expect the views to be so spectacular. The drive between Covadonga and the lakes was really breathtaking (*and probably nauseating if you get motion sickness). For me, the best part of Covadonga was those views.
After arriving at the lakes, I started a hike around two lakes. I was in a bit of a time crunch because I’d arrived later than I wanted, and I still wanted to have time to stop and see the sanctuary. So I pushed myself a bit on the hike. It was supposed to be 2-2.5 hours, but I finished in 1 hour 45 minutes, even with stopping to take pics and getting off-track for 5 minutes. I’m glad I had saved a map and the key landmarks of the hike in my phone. Despite there being probably 500(?) tourists
near the lakes that day, I only passed 4 others on that hike. Everyone else was content just to take pictures by the lakes. There are some parts of the hike over rocky landscapes, where it seems like lots of things could be a path and you’re not exactly sure until you spot a trail marker a couple of minutes later. If you’re prepared, you won’t have a problem, because you’ll be able to estimate what direction to head from each lake.
The lakes were nice, but honestly because I’d seen pictures of them before, they weren’t super-majestic. Also, I had been to the Italian Alps the summer before and saw lakes with bluer water that I measured Covadonga against. For sure, it was worth it to be in a beautiful landscape surrounded by snow-capped mountains, but the lakes were just like a 6 or 7 out of 10.
Because of the crowds, I actually had to wait to get on the second bus that came to go back down the hill. I didn’t anticipate that taking as long as it did, so beware if you go by bus during these peak periods. I
hopped off the bus in the village of Covadonga. In Covadonga, there’s a cave with a small chapel, as well as a sanctuary and church. Before researching, I just thought they were scenic, but actually there’s a lot of history there too. There was a battle in Covadonga in 722 between Moors and an Asturian king. It turned out that the Asturian side won, and it was basically the beginning of the resistance to the Moors (who at that time were in power over the majority of today's Spain). Because of how it resulted that the Moors eventually were defeated, Spanish history looks proudly upon Covadonga.
I saw the cave and the church in Covadonga in about 15 minutes. The town is mostly made up of a few tourist restaurants. I’m happy I checked it out, but I also it’s not worth it if you’re not already nearby (to see the lakes, hike, or visit Cangas). There’s nothing really that special that you can’t see in a picture or read about on Wikipedia.
At my hostel that night, I was shocked to meet three other Americans, also all traveling alone. Truly strange! Two of
them were living in Andalucia, and one was just visiting Spain. I had only really heard about Asturias this year and I live "next-door", so I was surprised that they all decided to come, and also that we all ended up in the middle of nowhere. I joined some of them for dinner down the street. It was cool to hang out with people from my country for a while. I kind of had forgotten how easy it is to talk to someone with your same accent and cultural background.
The next morning, I caught a bus back up to Cangas de Onís. I waited and waited for my bus to Las Arenas de Cabrales to show up. I carefully checked every bus that pulled up to make sure it wasn’t my bus (there were lots of buses in and out headed for the lakes), but I swear my bus didn’t come (and I’ll further this theory in the next blog post). I asked at the ticket counter, and the lady directed me to the cafeteria, which is apparently where they sell non-Covadonga bus tickets. That guy had no explanation for me but showed me the platform
the bus would come to, and exchanged my ticket for the next bus. Luckily that worked out!
In the few hours I had before the next bus, I walked around Cangas. It’s a cute little touristy town with a river running through it. They’ve developed the river with paths and footbridges along it. The town’s most famous landmark is a roman bridge framed by mountains. I truly could have been in way worse places for a few hours. I sat by the river in the sunshine, ate lunch, and listened to the aforementioned podcast, this time without any interruptions from drunk men. I made sure to arrive at the bus station early, and this time, I caught the bus. On to Las Arenas de Cabrales!
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