Jose, can you see?

So the Fourth of July came and went. I celebrated by pretending to be German. It was an honest mistake: While watching the futbol game, the bartender asked "¿Alemania?" and I said "Sí", meaning that I was cheering for Germany in the game. But of course he was asking me if I am German--by the time I realized that it seemed too late to explain. At least he didn´t try speaking German.

Anyway. The posting at the park and three different TV stations´ weather reports all said it was gonna storm today. But one channel said it was gonna rain in the afternoon, and I´m only here for three days, and it was clear at 9am. So I went back to the park hoping for the best but knowing I might end up wet and miserable far away from civilization; I don´t even have rain gear. Sometimes you get lucky. I hiked from about 10am until about 3pm and at about 3:30 it started raining. A good part of the hike I did today was around the side of a mountain--exhilarating but kinda scary. It would have been easy enough to go over the edge. I didn´t. I saw some chamois deer, and ate lunch on a rock by a waterfall. I wouldn´t want to live in the wilderness, probably not even close to it, but it really is great to be out in it now and then.

Torla, the town where I´m staying, is really cute. Just what you might imagine for a little village tucked away in the mountains. Of course it´s full of tourists, but it doesn´t feel touristy. Wilderness tourists are more innocuous than city tourists, I think, even if they do smell a little worse.