At dinner last night, Mark, our host, asked what time we’d like to have breakfast. When we said 6:30, his reply was: “No. Seven [is] better.” OK, Mark, whatever you said.
So this morning we woke up to a breakfast of fried egg and thick toasts, fig jam, farmer’s cheese and, get this, freshly churned butter. Soft, tasty, savory, yummy butter. I could eat it on toast with nothing else all day. We scarfed down all the food on the table, thinking we’d need all the energy we could get for today’s long hike.
Before we left Mark gave us our packed lunch and bade us goodbye.
We walked to the trailhead and spent the next three kilometers walking on the bleached white pebbles on the dried-up river bank. Every so often a 4×4 drove past us, the pebbles rumbling underneath the speeding tires. They were carrying tourists who wanted to skip this first section. I recalled reading an online blog that recommended bypassing this section with 4WD because “the scenery is not that interesting anyway” and for a good half an hour I wondered if we should have followed the advice. In the end, my internal monologue led me to decide that, “No, faster isn’t always better,” and “Who’s to say that this stretch of trail is or is not worth my time?” Definitely not some random person on the Internet. In the end, we enjoyed the ‘boring’ walk across this lithic landscape, which gave us more time to admire the view of the mountain ranges beyond.
One enduring trend on our trip thus far is this constant feeling of needing to find the “best” way, as though there is one right answer, one true path, etc. In fact, it’s not just a trend of our trip, but of our day and age in general. Isn’t FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) essentially this abstract angst that one isn’t doing what one is supposed to be doing? We assume that at any given moment there is the best option for what we should be doing, eating, wearing, going, and even thinking. I, too, have fallen into the same trap and spend, no, waste countless hours checking out all the possible options beforehand so I can make the best decisions. Hungry? Great, now let me spend the next thirty minutes on my phone finding the best place to eat. Bored? Great, let’s browse Netflix for an hour looking for the best movie to watch. Traveling? Great, let’s research all the places, sights and restaurants we should go to when we’re there. In the end, we’re leaving less and less to chance and accidents and serendipities.
At some point the road ended and a narrow dirt footpath took its place. The trail took us up the hill between farm plots and sheep pens erected out of wood logs . I remembered this particular area being particularly “ripe” with cattle poop of varying sizes and freshness. We saw a farmer herding her cows up the same trails to take them to graze somewhere up in the mountains.
We decided to take a detour and visit a waterfall, which would add a few kilometers to our hike. To be exact, add a few kilometers of extremely steep uphill section, the kind that required us to huff and puff and scramble over large boulders. Perhaps it was a good thing I didn’t know this beforehand because then I would have not agreed to go to the waterfall. 😉
One section was particularly memorable. A rapid crossing made of wooden branches piled haphazardly on top of each other. It looked really unsafe, and it swayed when you stepped on it. But we survived…
We then joined the main trail towards the mountain pass. It was no easy walk, but whenever we ran out of breath, we stopped, turned around and saw the postcard-perfect view of the mountains and the valleys below us. What an incredible vista! This was definitely one of the most beautiful hikes I’ve ever done. The weather was perfect too: sunny, not windy, not cold. And since the altitude was much lower here compared to the mountains in Colorado, it was actually much more enjoyable to hike, not feeling like you’re breathless all the time. And the lower altitude also made for a greener, more colorful landscape. The wildflowers were in full bloom dotting the green grass with explosions of white, yellow, the most striking blue I’ve ever seen, purple. Wild roses everywhere.
The wild strawberries were in season too. For the first time in my life, I finally understood where strawberry-scented products came from. I had always wondered why people thought strawberry smelled that way because the strawberries we bought in supermarkets definitely did not carry that particular smell. But these wild, tiny fruits, no bigger than a raisin, were packed with flavor and distinctly pungent strawberry smell. One bit and the smell just overwhelmed your senses like little grenades of plump juicy strawberry shot.
We continued along the path that took us across another dried up river bed into a savanna that led up towards the mountain pass. It was intimidating to see how ar up the pass was from where we were. We saw a few hikers up above and they looked like tiny neon dots moving diagonally across the mountain face. There were a few bikers coming down the pass. They were walking their bikes down because it was way too steep to ride, unless you’re a little bit suicidal.
Finally got to the top of the pass around noon and found a sunny perch to have lunch. I was excited to open up the lunch bag that Mark had packed for us. He had packed us toast, grilled peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, farmer’s cheese, sausage and hard-boiled egg. We ate our lunch in silence while admiring the view.
With all the food in our stomachs, I knew I would soon get tired and sleepy if we didn’t head down soon, so we laced up our boots and started our descent to Theth. The hike down was quite uneventful. The landscape suddenly changed into a beech forest with large moss-covered trunks, and their giant roots criss-crossing the trail. A few more kilometers of this and the road turned into gravel roads and we started seeing signs for guesthouses.
Then we saw the village of Theth below us.
