Hail on the hilltop

On Saturday, Beza and I walked from Logrono to Alcanadre. The guides gave varying distances, from 32 km to 40 km, which was a pain in the arse because we had to time our walk to arrive in Alcanadre by 4.08 pm, which was when the first train back to Logrono was (the second and last train was at 7.25 pm).

We ended up arriving at about 4.20 pm, just missing the train and had to catch the train to Calahorra and a bus from Calahorra to Logrono.

But it turned out that it wasn't so bad after all, considering what other horror might have befallen us.

On the way to Alcanadre, we had to climb up a small mountain and when we reached the top, we saw this huge black cloud hovering over the horizon. It was about another two hours to the village and we hadn't seen signposts for the last six or seven kilometers, so thought we were lost.

Just when we were about to give up, we saw a beautiful yellow arrow on an abandoned barn marking the camino. (The Camino de Santiago is pretty well signposted and it's hard to get lost but we were doing this stage in reverse, which is a lot more complicated that it sounds.)

On Monday, when I read the papers, it turned out the massive black cloud we saw was the biggest hailstorm to hit La Rioja in decades. There were hailstones half a metre high in Alcanadre and surrounding villages and most of the wine crops were 100% damaged, which means no wine next year. Windshields, windows and glass doors were broken, the blinds and corrugated roofs had holes punched into them and everything was devastated.

I'm not sure if anyone was caught in the storm but I suppose it would've been quite uncomfortable to have hailstones the size of cricket balls pelting at your head.

A meringue is a beautiful thing

I made this meringue (and about 20 others but without the decoration) on Sunday morning. It was surprisingly simple, although because I didn't have an electric beater, I had to beat it by hand and now have a sore right arm. I don't know how the people used to survive without electricity. They probably didn't make meringues.

Afterwards, Millán was playing in an ice hockey match so we went to watch him. The weather has been weird- it changed from sunny to rainy every five seconds yesterday. So I left the house thinking it would be hot and sunny, in shorts and thongs and nearly froze in the ice rink.

More Camino de Santiago

On Saturday, we did another bit of the Camino de Santiago, from Calahorra to Alcanadre. Again we were going to do two days and again we just did one because the weather report said it would rain. (Photo: in the playground in Alcanadre)

This time we started a little later because it was only 22 km. It was supposed to take about four and a half hours, so when we arrived at 3 pm, after three and a half hours (and including a half hour break for lunch), I actually thought we were in a different village.

We entered a bar to ask directions to the train station, which probably wasn't really necessary because it's a village with a population of 350 people and maybe seven or eight streets. There were five old men sitting round a table chatting or reading the newspaper, and when I entered the bar, there was a dead silence and all the people turned around and looked at me, like they'd never seen an Asian person in their life.

When we started there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the sun was scorching. Both of us ended up getting pretty sunburnt, even with sunscreen but now people can't make fun of me for being so pasty. And for once the weather report was correct. It started pouring down rain at about 6 pm with huge chunks of hail.

Macmillan, soccer and tortilla

On Wednesday, Macmillan, the publisher of the primary school textbooks that we use, held a series of talks to publicise their new textbooks and market their readers a little.

It was absolutely awesome. In the talks, the speaker talked about activities you could do with kids and every time he needed a volunteer, I was the first to put my hand up, because I love this sort of thing. Some of the teachers attending probably thought I was a bit crazy, or hyperactive and over-eager but I got free stamps for volunteering, so ha!

Afterwards, I met up with Beza to watch the all-important Barca vs Chelsea soccer match in a bar. It was a great match. Chelsea were winning 1-0 and Barca was down a player because of a penalty but in the last two minutes they scored a goal and the bar went crazy. So now they're in the finals which will be played at the end of May and I bet there'll be people waiting in the bars by 4 pm to nab some decent seats.

We went back to my flat to make dinner because the bar was just down the street from me and Beza kindly offered to make tortilla. So I started making homemade soy icecream while he fried up the potatoes and onion. While I was boiling the icecream on the stove, he asked me 'Is that it?'

I thought he was asking me if it was icecream so I said yes, and the next thing I knew, he'd grabbed the saucepan and poured it all into the potatoes and onions. My shriek of anguish almost cracked the glass in my flat. We ended up eating the eggs he hadn't used for dinner but I was incredibly upset that I had no tortilla and no icecream.

On Friday, I decided to recreate our unsuccessful tortilla. IIt was tasty-ish but lacked an egg, so it sort of fell apart. I've been told that if I learn nothing else in Spain I have to learn how to make a decent tortilla.