Hey all,
nice hotel bed sleep last night – feeling clean and refreshed after a decent night's sleep. Posted some presents home for the folks and Grandma this morning and at the post office got some help trying to recharge my stupid internet stick. Not happy with this Bouygues Telecom at all. Their coverage sucks for starters – my mobile phone has a SIM which picks up any network going, and I again have Orange so will be able to talk to K in a couple of hours, but not Bouygues Telecom. Anyway, I showed the lady at the post-office the problem I am having when trying to recharge – it is in French, so I have no idea – there is an International Visitor's link on the recharge page, with an English flag – but it just takes you to basically the exact same page: still in French. It turns out there is a footnote on that page saying that it will only accept French credit cards. She told me to find someone I knew with a French credit card and get them to do it for me, give them cash. Which I then tried to do. Now I have not had a shave for a couple of weeks, so am looking more than usually criminal – attempting to get total strangers, who could not really understand me, to give me their credit card details went about as well as could be expected.
Finally I gave up, went to the station, got on a bus back to Vizzavona and started the next stage. Was pretty easy, which was just as well, as I did not get started till about 2:30. Caught up with English hippy and the guy from Holland he is travelling with – they are both pretty experienced backpackers – English hippy actually did Central America in the 80s... The guy from Holland makes documentaries about backpacking and does other TV stuff back home – I like their attitude – a lot of people seem to do this walk at this kind of insane breakneck speed, then sit around all afternoon at the refuges, which I don't understand. If you are going to put yourself to this much trouble and effort, you may as well stop and enjoy the view from time to time. Hippy and Holland certainly do that – when I came across them today English had just finished cooking, and Holland was lying there on a rock, apparently asleep. He seems to have the metabolism of a cat – lays about in the sun, jumps up suddenly, charges off for the next couple of hours (and they both walk pretty quick when they actually do so) then lies down in the sun again, gets fed by hippy, does everything short of actually purr.
Am camping off the reservation tonight – it was getting late and I wanted to do a camp on my own – you are not supposed to, but after the last refuge I reckon if they are going to charge me to sleep in a cattle yard and get gastro then I am going to ignore their rules from time to time. Clambered up the side of a hill and set up the hammock – you can't have a much lower impact camp than not even touching the ground – made myself a nice meal of pasta with a packet soup (which is all the packet pastas are when you get down to it) and some sausage. Then sat there as it got dark and the mist rolled in, smoked a cigar. Very peaceful – only thing I am a little worried about is the ravenous wild boars – I am at the perfect height lying here in the hammock – they would not even have to bend their heads, the animals – they could just tuck on in : nom nom nom... Holland saw me disappear into the trees though and said goodnight, so at least they will know where to find me...
Photos: 1-4. This is kind of what I expected the whole walk to be like – a nice stroll through a forest... 5. This means there is a spring in 50 metres – I like the way they just call it “Source” – as in The Source. Cool. 6. This is what the spring looks like – this is safe to drink. 7, 8. A nice view and a tree which looked interesting.
PS – new boot/inners/thin socks combo working beautifully – so comfortable I did not take them off until I got into bed – usually the first thing I do is pull the boots off, put on thongs – you should always listen to advice from the Irish.
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