We wake in the morning and have a big breakfast. Partly because we are hungry, partly because we will need a lot of energy for the day ahead, mostly because we want to lighten our packs. Fiona is stung by a bee. Not a very glamorous injury, but it does give us the chance to use another item from our huge medical / first aid kit; which makes us feel better about lugging all of this junk around. We pack up our campsite and get off to an early start.
We make it 200 metres before we are flagged down by a shepherd and his 10 year old son. The son is fidgeting with a hand gun which looks far too big for him. The shepherd wants us to go to his house for tea and breakfast. We explain that we have already had breakfast, but the relevance of this information seems lost on our potential hosts. We keep politely declining, the shepherd keeps politely insisting, the son keeps fidgeting with the hand gun, and periodically waving it in the air. On the basis that it is the height of bad manners to decline a dinner invitation made at gunpoint, we relent and soon find ourselves inside the shepherd's hut, where his son proceeds to show us his football boots. A ten year old with football boots and a hand gun; he really is living the dream.
The shepherd's wife gives us tea; and bread with salted chopped tomatoes and green chilies. I manage to refrain from asking for a cappuccino instead. Having had second breakfast, we proceed on our way, with all local protocols respected.
Shepherd boy's mum
The rest of the day is long. We climb another 900m, and spend an hour trying to find a cliff side hermitage mentioned in the guidebook. We eventually locate it several hundred metres from the location shown on the iPhone app; SNAFU. There are 50cm wide worn smooth rock cut stairs leading up to a fissure in the cliff wall, with a vertical drop on one side. I've done a bit of rock climbing, and I don't consider myself to be afraid of heights, but I decide that I'm not going to ascend these stairs for anything less than an absolute guarantee that the Holy Grail is located at the top. We abandon this side trip.
Shepherd's dog, wondering whether it is too early for lunch.
We eat lunch at 4pm, in a forest clearing near the top of the mountain range. The scenary is delightful, but we are aware that we still have many hours walking ahead of us. Fortunately the terrain under foot improves, and the endless large sharp edged stones are replaced by the soft leaf debris of the forest floor.
View from the top of the range.
We make camp at 8pm, one kilometre short of my ideal stop-point for the day. A very good effort given all of the day's distractions. By the time that we come to cook dinner, the sun has already set, and we crawl into our sleeping bags forgoing such niceties as brushing teeth. Oh how quickly the adornments of civilisation are lost.
Today's tortoise count : 0
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