Las Médulas, my best day so far....

The trip to Ponferrada and Las Médulas started at 9:30 Saturday morning. It wasn´t hard to wake up ´cause I´m not going out to party all the time like the other students.
Almost all the students participated, or about 40. We started off going to Ponferrada, a town which is about an hour from León. My roommate, Angelica, is also born there :) We looked at a castle which was great because Iceland doesn´t have any old structures like that, but first we had coffee. In Spain they really like taking it slow and ´me likes very much´ :) After that we drove for about an hour and had lunch at a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere from 2-4. I loved it! I had ´menu del día´ which is a three course meal with all the wine you can drink for only 9 euros. The food in Spain is usually pretty fatty, but quite good. I was sitting with a Chinese couple, an American girl and one of the Spanish teachers. The rest of the group was sitting elsewhere. I didn´t mind ´cause the wine was damn good and I started talking more than I ever had in Spanish writing down every word the teacher said in my little ´Palabras del día´book. At this moment I really started understanding why siesta is so important. I hadn´t felt this great in years!
After lunch we drove up to Las Médulas. We had to walk through a beautiful little village first. i felt like I was a part of either ancient times or a story where main characters were old people sitting out in the sun all day. The weather was wonderful, like a good summer in Iceland, but pretty cold for the folks in the village I would imagine.
The we walked through some kind of a wood to get to the top. The colours of autumn (sorry my North American friends, but fall is just not as pretty....) where absolutely beautiful. It was almost too good to be true. It felt so good to just go with the flow instead of having to be in charge of the group. Javíer told us all about the Médulas. I understood most of it... something about the Romans and 3rd Century...hehe.... Oh well....
We walked through a tunnel with a flashlight and I saw a bat. We looked at more caves, big and small. The hike was about 3 hours and the whole time I was thinking how wonderful I felt. I hadn´t been this happy for a long time. I was speaking more Spanish then ever before (with a little help from vino tinto, but that´s all good) and didn´t have to worry about anybody but myself. I was a participant, appreciating Spanish nature to the fullest!