The road east to Pamplona cuts its way up over and through steep forested mountains with almost no signs of human habitation. The city itself is famous for its annual ‘Running of the Bulls’ festival where the bovines are let loose down the streets and locals and kiwi backpackers are photographed with looks of sheer terror on their face as they scramble over one another trying to get out of the way of them, and later make macho claims of patting the bulls head. The festival kicks off in a couple of weeks. Karina doesn’t think much of the whole thing, as the bulls are killed at the end in the arena. I pointed out that they don’t have a fun time at the abattoir either, and at least they get a fair chance of horning some pesky humans before they become sirloin. But I find arguments based on moral equivalence hold little water with most people.
We parked up and had a stroll down Pamplona’s narrow streets that the bulls will run down in a couple of weeks time. I was surprised to find that they contained fairly upmarket shops, like letting the bulls loose down Bond St. There were a lot of stores selling the white with red sash bull-running pajamas, bull souvenirs, bull labeled wine etc, i.e. classic bull shit. We walked past the colosseum-like stadium the bulls eventually run into that was all locked up at the time, had some lunch then hit the road once more.
East of Pamplona, the road followed a wide dry valley between two mountain ranges, along a river and past drystone hilltop villages and monasteries, most of which appeared abandoned. We eventually came to an inviting long reservoir, its green waters lapping rocky pine-clad shores. We stopped the van and had a dip, which in the heat of day was just the ticket. The water was fresh and cool we stayed for a couple of hours just splashing about. There was a monastery village on the next point, with numerous boats anchored in front of it. Though the only signs of life we saw was a topless Spanish woman driving a powerboat standing up with one hand. She powered across to each part of the lake in turn as if it say, “check out my knockers” to the region. In the late afternoon Karina had a snooze in the back while the clouds that were stacking themselves over the high Pyrenees to the north suddenly let loose with quite chunky hail stones. I thought it best to call it a night, and so parked next to a man-made stone river channel just before the high mountain pass into France we would take the next day. In the distance we could see patches of snow clinging to the rocky peaks.