Handed down

Sorry this entry is so long; I didn't have time to write a shorter one. Go large to appreciate the beauty of the artwork.

A full-on touristy day today. We left the apartment at about 10 and didn't get back till 9 pm, after lunch and two guided tours, one after the other.

We started out in Elizondo, shopping and visiting the tourist information office. This was where we found we could go on a guided tour of Elizondo, based on the locations used in Dolores Redondo's thrillers. So we signed up for that, and for an earlier tour of one of the Jauregias (ducal palaces) dotted about the Baztan. We'd already booked lunch at the restaurant we never miss when we're in this area, Dona Maria, so that was the day pretty much filled up. We pootled about on the way to Dona Maria, stopping in Arizkun, which is a typical Basque village except that it's even more beautiful than most of them. Last time we were here we were watching people fire-jumping on midsummer's eve. S left me there to take photos while he nipped back to the campsite to put the shopping in the fridge.

At Dona Maria we had a lovely meal and also had a catch-up with Georgina, who is responsible for making us fall in love with this area; we lived in her little cottage for three months in 2010. When S phoned her yesterday it turned out that she too had booked in for lunch at Dona Maria with this week's group of Spanish learners. So we only had time for a quick chat, but she suggested that we pop up to her house to see the extension she'd had built.

We didn't have much time, but we headed up the narrow back road that is only used by locals. At one point I had to stop due to the combination of a man cutting a hedge, his dog running about in the road, and another French car coming the other way. The driver of the other car waved at me so I wound the window down, thinking he must be lost. "Are you lost?" he asked in French, before I could ask the same question. "No, we're going to Ameztia". "Oh, you know the way then!" We thought we did, but S then proceeded to direct me the wrong way due to faulty memory, and by the time we realised this we didn't have time to get there and back, so we ended up returning the way we came and getting to Irurita, site of our first visit, in a sudden downpour.

The man who showed us round the place was the latest generation of the family that has lived in the house since 1435 (in the Basque country, houses own people, not the other way round). He started speaking in the fastest Spanish I have ever heard. After a few minutes he stopped and asked us if we were following. "A bit more slowly," we pleaded. He spoke more slowly for one sentence. After a couple of minutes a Spanish guy in the party reminded him that he was supposed to be speaking slowly, but it was no use. The visit lasted an hour and a half, so it was a bit exhausting. I took this photo when he was casually showing us the family's centuries-old record books, stored in tattered brown envelopes in a cupboard. Someone asked him if he wasn't concerned about preservation of this ancient paper, fabric, and leather, but he clearly saw them as just part of his family's heritage, to be freely handled.

We just had time to get back to Elizondo for the Redondo-themed tour. There were more people on this one, and a guide who spoke slowly and clearly. Fortunately, because Elizondo is a noisy place at 7 pm on a Saturday. A terrible rock band was doing sound tests in the square. Loudspeakers in the street were blasting out music. Yelling children were playing in the street. Further away, a Basque choir was singing plangent Basque songs in beautiful harmony, provided you blocked out all the other noise. At one point we visited a bar that had a pelote court, inside the bar -- not something I've ever seen before. Mingled with the noise of the pelote game was a raucous table football game along with the usual loud music and shouted conversation -- I retreated rapidly back to the street.

This tour lasted well over two hours; we threw in the towel when the guide suggested walking a kilometre to the cemetery, and returned to the campsite to drink wine and eat tapas. None of my photos do justice to the beauty of the Baztan, so I just picked this one as it was easy to blip with no fiddling. Alternatives: Arizkun and Elizondo. I will do a Flickr set later; no chance of catching up with other journals and comments as the wifi is a bit flaky here, and only works in reception.