We picked up our rental car in Pamplona, said goodbye to Jeremy, our in-country host, and headed right back out of town toward Haro. We'll be returning to Pamplona for a few days at the end of our trip, so we just pushed on.
Today, Haro is a humble agricultural town in the middle of an ocean of vineyards. It's easy to see that once upon a time in it's history, Haro had enjoyed considerable prosperity. These days it was looking a little on the downside, but the working class core of the village had hung on. If you took away the shiney wine tour bus, it felt like we were visiting old Spain. There were the regular clots of old guys in the bars for coffee in the AM's and the same crew back again for tapas in the afternoon. The elder women could be seen going into the church in the morning and shopping in the afternoon. Everywhere people carried loaves of bread; cars were parked wherever and every direction; and small, round guys like me wearing black tams could be seen on bicycles.
In the very center of town was the
Church of Santo Tomás, an imposing structure with intricate carvings in stone and on the doors. It had a very tall and ornate steeple. It's another demonstration of the wealth the town once possessed. As is the case with so many of these grand structures, it literally took generations of builders to finish just some part of the construction. I couldn't escape the sense the tower was like a giant push-pin anchoring the village in its place in the countryside.
We stayed about four blocks from the church in the center of the town at
Hotel Los Agustinos, billed as an old monastery. In fact, the structure has had many incarnations prior to becoming a four star hotel. In 1373 it was a monastery for ten or so monks. Then in 1809 it was taken over as a military garrison. Two years later it served as a military hospital and then in 1839 it served as a prison. Finally, in 1989 it became a hotel and was clearly the best accommodations the town had to offer. We had two, absolutely four-star dinners in the hotel, and on the supporting columns next to the table were inscriptions carved into the stone from angry prisoners with a lot of time on their hands.
On our second day in Haro, we managed a two-fer. Wine tasting late AM and then what was supposed to be a two hour walk in the afternoon.
First the wine tasting...There were easily a dozen bodegas within walking distance of our hotel. We could have opted for the fancy wine bus, but it seemed silly when we could almost see our destination from the hotel. Max, being our wine guy, had done some research and we chose
Bodega Muga
and
Bodega Alta. Alta is also what you get after about two hours of tasting wine. It was fun, slightly educational, and we all managed to purchase wine that we liked. Funny how the wine kept tasting better as the morning unfolded!
Haro is also the home of the biggest waste of wine imaginable. At the Haro Wine Festival every summer, they have wine drinking competitions and contests. I haven't had time to find out what those events are, but I do know about the Batalla de Vino (Battle of Wine). At one festival way back before anyone can remember, someone emptied his wine glass over his friend's head, and the rest is literally history. Today, the happy revelers run around pouring wine on each other from buckets or any container available. Over the course of the event, 130,000 liters of wine are thrown using all types of containers. The result is a large crowd of people looking very much like wine grapes themselves, only making considerable more noise.
We took our purchases back to the hotel and then headed out for a short nature walk. We had chosen the statue of San Felices as our destination, about six kilometers out of town on a little used road. We're thinking Felices from the song Feliz Navidad we've all heard and that paying our respects to the Saint of Happiness was generally a good idea. That's wine tasting in the morning working for you. We headed out on our walk and a little ways out of town discovered a Caminos Naturales and a segment of the Camino de Santiago. We left the highway for the more natural trail and became happy pilgrims.
The route was indeed natural in that it took the very long way around through the countryside to get to the base of a small mountain that had San Felices on the top. Two hours longer actually. We passed lots of grapes, an almond tree, fig trees, and old Roman ruins. By the time we tired walkers got to San Felices, we needed a dose of happy.
In the 6th century, San Felices and his disciple San Millán, actually built a hermitage on top of this mountain where I guess they spent their days in contemplation. Because it was a pilgrimage trail, some suffering was in order. The trail didn't end until twenty minutes later after a long climb of stairs to get to the Saint's feet. The vista was almost worth it.
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| San Max - Monastary |
We took the road back, pretty much done with pilgrimages and nature for the day. Yes, we were tired, but when the waitress told us that San Felices had no connection to the word or feeling of happiness, and that he was just a Saint with a similar sounding name, it put the very long walk and it's trials in perspective. We had our second four star dinner in our hotel during which we decided we'd cut our Haro stay short and head for France the next morning.
More soon as we leave Rioja wine country and head for Max's place near Bordeaux in the morning.
Feliz Navidad to you all,
Earl, Gwen, and Max
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