Perks of being Travel Size

Because Ally's mom is here, we have made a better effort towards doing things besides hanging around our freezing cold piso. One of our outings took us on a trip to Aracena in the Sierras in Huelva. One of Ally's student, Juan, offered to take us on a day trip with his wife. We thought we'd be going on a little hike thing, so Ally, Marica and I got all ready for hiking. Shoes, sweatshirt, everything...

We woke up and were rushing to get ready, we kept thinking that Juan is Spanish, he's going to come late so we don't have to be in a hurry.... of course, Juan turns out to be the only Spanish person that arrives early or even on time. We get into the car, and begin our almost 2 hours drive to this place. We´ve just heard that it´s an amazing location, but nothing else. Sometimes I forget what it´s like to be in a car for long periods of time, because I rarely am in a car, besides commuting to work. 

Being in a car here, is not like sitting in my large Honda CRV, the cars here appear to be smaller, and coming from a person of my size, that´s hard to say. Either way, I experienced a lot of car sickness... but we did make it there. It was a beautiful day, and being able to see all the trees, and hills and rivers, reminded me of driving on I-5 towards California or something. For a split second I thought I was back in WA.

We arrived to Aracena, and found out that we were going to see this thing called La Gruta de Maravilla, it turned out to be this underground cave thing with crazy rock formations. It was one of the prettiest things I´ve seen in a while. It was super duper humid inside... 100%. It reminded me of the Vinh Ha Long caves I went to 4 years ago. We couldn´t take pictures inside, but it was still a beautiful site. One of the downsides of the cave was that

 it was a little dangerous, a lot of the paths you had to duck or else risk getting your head taken out... however, if you´re like me, and travel-size you just walk normally, and there are no problems. :)

After our little trip we went went home to Huelva, but before returning back to our piso, we stopped by a beautiful site, where there was a statue dedicated to Chrisopher Columbus. The name now escapes me, but it was beautiful, the sun was setting, and it was a beautiful site.

All in all the day was great. I realized that there are beautiful things in the Province of Huelva, although you have to drive 2 hours to get there.... It was a great thing to do while Ally´s mom was here.

Sending all my love!!!

Besitos,

ngoc :)