
![Rosario Flores - Colindres](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2016-08-28-rosario-flores-in-colindres/28997211540_33f58432df_s.jpg "Rosario Flores - Colindres")Last night, my sleepy little fishing village, population seven thousand, managed to scrape together enough tax funds1 to afford to provide a free concert by two-time Latin Grammy Award winning artist, Rosario Flores. I became aware of her in 2002, shortly after dropping all my things and moving to England to live with my future wife, when our mutual flatmate, a Spanish girl, brought back a Rosario CD, [_Muchas Flores_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muchas_Flores) (one of her Grammy wins), from Spain. She also is a member of the elite group of five or six of artists for whom we have CDs that live in the glove box of our car, so over the years, I have learned some of her songs.  The word that kept coming to mind during her concert was "professional". She had been performing and entertaining for decades, and it showed. Even down to the way that a crew member, dressed in black, of course, to be invisible, crawled out onto the stage when the electric guitarist moved across the stage, so as to make sure there was never enough slack in the cord for the guitarist to trip over. Her band was also amazing, and the backup singer is probably a better singer than her boss. She learned the name of our town and used it well, speaking to the audience as if we were her friends.

Rosario is a bit of a pop princess, as she is the daughter of a flamenco megastar, Lola Flores. Lola's wikipedia page uses the phrase "an icon of traditional Andalusian folklore", and every Spaniard I've ever had talk to me about Lola says that it's impossible to overstate how important she was. Rosario has never been pretty, even on her airbrushed album covers, but at age 52, she has an _amazing_ body, and amazing hair, and she knows how to use them both to great effect. A few of her corporal stage antics, like galloping around whilst slapping her own bottom as if she were riding a horse, crossed the line from sexy to silly, but no one could say she's not a seasoned professional entertainer.

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_Gracias, Rosario. Que vuelvas pronto._

1 Computer nerd footnote: When I was in high school in the mid nineties, I suffered from a thankfully-brief addiction to a computer game called [_Civilization_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series)), in which the player has to govern a population and build the economy and military and eventually take over the world. If, however, you work your people too hard, they get unhappy and revolt against you. One of the things you could do when morale was low in the populace was to spend money on entertainment. I'm 90% sure that the icon for the entertainment, in those horrible VGA graphics, was a little pixelated representation of Vegas Elvis. One thing my town does very well – both the previous mayor and the current one, of the same socialist party – is spend public funds on entertainment.


Rosario Flores in Colindres


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This past Sunday, with the kids summering with their grandparents down south, my wife and I signed up for a hike organized by the local tourism board. It was advertised as: **Subida a la balconada del Cerreo**, 4:30 hours, 600 meter change (Medium Difficulty). We thought, "600 meters! That's nothing!" Of course the 600 meters is really only measuring the difference from the lowest to the highest point. While it was quite as high as the [Pico de las Nieves](/?s=pico+nieves), which you can drive almost all the way up to, we did end up with a very nice view from which we could have hit our house with a laser.  When we got to the meeting point, a little early, we were expecting to see a dozen or twenty other hikers, but there were closer to 200. Many of them were clearly avid aficionados of the hobby, with their hiking boots, sweat-wicking, brightly colored clothes, telescoping aluminum walking sticks, and tight-fitting backpacks with a straw to drink water from without stopping.

The cost to play was 7€, which gave you a little goodie bag with a bottle of water, a granola bar, and an apple. The pros took their goodie bags back to their cars, as they were already prepared, but that apple sure tasted good to me about 70% through the hike! The price also included a _parrillada_ of grilled chorizo and bacon, with free beer, water, and sangria at the end. Plus, a really nice brightly colored, sweat-wicking t-shirt! The shirt alone must be worth at least 25€.

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Everyone signing up. There were several kids around ten years old, and a few dogs that made the hike, too.

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And we're off! There were a few 50-something men that sped off and left us all in the dust, but we held our own at around the middle of the pack. Our hike took us right by [the cave we had visited with the kids](https://erikras.com/2014/10/27/cueva-del-valle-rasines-cantabria/).

Most of the hike was quite enjoyable, but there were definitely times around the middle and the end, where I was _not_ having fun. My watch was tracking my heart rate, and there is a big drop-off of enjoyment between 140 and 170 bpm. There were many moments of absolute shock and awe when we were desperately hoping to start going back downhill, and we would spot the brightly colored shirts of the people ahead of us _waaaaay_ the hell up on a ridge. But once we got up there, we could look down triumphantly at the hikers below us who had that climb ahead of them.

There was one man who I judged to be about 55, that went at exactly our pace for the whole walk. I got to know his shoes and backpack very well, as I was staring at them for hours.

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Surely we're not going up there!!?! Yep.

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Our house is just above my head, in line with my right ear.

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There was this one little forest at the very top of the mountain that was like a separate biome of mossy rocks. If gnomes existed, they'd live in a place like this.

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High in the sky.

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More mossy forest. We got the sensation that the regular hikers weren't enjoying their surroundings much; they were just plodding forward, onward and upward, not appreciating the view or smelling the moss.

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This cliff side was covered in horse hair and dung. The horses that live up here on the mountain definitely use it for refuge.

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"Easy \[_pant!_\] peasy!"

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This is the view from the _Balconada_, or balcony, of _Cerreo_.

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Resting on top of a mountain.

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We finally arrived back in civilization, and, once we caught our breath, we began talking a bit to the man we had been near the whole time, the one who I had guessed was about 55. He told us he was _eighty-three years old_ and goes to every one of the ten or so organized hikes like this every year, although his right leg is starting to hurt, so he doesn't know how much longer he will be doing it. We were left in awe.

After picking up our shirts and eating some bacon and sangria, we came back home to rest. I chose the couch, but my wife went to the beach for several hours. Cantabria has some great geographical offerings.

![Step Data](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2016-08-22-hiking-in-cantabria-balconada-del-cerreo/28531763924_2842346470_z.jpg "Step Data")


2 posts from August, 2016