I just got back from taking 14 kids into the Caldera. Well, their teacher was in charge, but they needed a second adult along. Now most such school trips have to stay in the campsite, which means carrying tents in, but we were seriously lucky. The teacher, Miguel Angel, is friends with the man in charge of looking after the irrigation canals inside the Caldera, so we could stay in a hostel which isn’t available to the public for rent. It was pretty basic, but adequate, except that it has 12 beds and there were 16 of us. So four of the girls shared beds, and two of the boys slept on the floor, including my son the first night. (He hardly slept, which left him rather maungy.) But there was a toilet and shower and kitchen with three gas rings. And a water tank which makes a great swimming pool!
I’m a writer. I have a serious case of writer’s bottom, writer’s thighs and writer’s tum. In fact the only parts of me that are fit are my fingers (all that pounding a keyboard). So it’s been a long time since I’ve walked more than a couple of miles. On this trip we spent about half our time walking, and it’s emphatically not flat! I’d gasp my way up a 30º slope at what the teacher considered an insanely slow crawl, and flop down for a rest for a while before I even raised my head to look at the view.
And then the scenery would knock the breath out of me all over again.
To be continued…
