When I finally awoke from my prolonged slumber it was time to figure out what to do. I first called my brother to let him know of my change of plans, that I wasn't going to be hiking all the way to our meeting point in Lescun in 10 days. I was able to find a pay phone in town (I still don’t carry a cell phone with me when I travel), but the only place in town with public Internet access was closed for "Vacances".

My first thought was to abandon the idea of trekking altogether . Carrying a big backpack is just miserable! Maybe Doug and I would get together in Lescun and Gavarnie and some other towns and do day hikes from those places with little daypacks rather than from point to point with big backpacks. Or maybe we’d just do the stretch from Lescun to Gavarnie together at a slow pace. In the higher elevations things would be cooler and drier, conditions I find more pleasant and am more accustomed to in Colorado. At this point I still couldn’t quite think straight and decided it was best not to make such a big decision until I got back to San Sebastian.

I spent a full day in Elizondo to relax and recover my bearings again. Elizondo is a beautiful Basque town of about 3,000 people in the northern part of the Navarre region. Set in a valley along the Baztun River, its appearance is almost alpine. The Basque farmhouses bear some resemblance to Swiss chalets anre are some of the prettiest residential buildings I’ve seen anywhere. The gardens in the town were full of roses and almost every window had a box underneath it growing geraniums, hanging petunias, and other flowers . Short on sights, I spent good parts of the day in bars and restaurants sampling tapas and some of the local cuisine.

I couldn’t help but feel “I just want to go home!” Wait, though – I can’t do that. I’m a nomad. By definition I don’t have a home. I have to just keep moving.

A few days before I started the trek I joked in a post on Facebook “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger!” Well, I emerged alive from the mountains three days after starting. Once I was back in San Sebastian a two days after I stopped walking I realized I could now sprint up a flight of stairs with my backpack that now seemed light. OK, I’m ready to tackle a shorter trek in the high elevations of the central Pyrenees where it will be colder the way I like it, and where there are mountain huts to stay in so it’s not necessary to carry all forms of heavy camping gear and lots of food to weigh you down.

I took the bus back to San Sebastian and somewhat embarrassedly returned to the same hostel. “What happened,” Ion asked. I had some good stories to tell the people I met over the next few days at the hostel, especially about getting chased by the pig. Most significantly, I went to a post office in San Sebastian and mailed home 10 pounds (4.5 kilos) of gear I determined I no longer needed for the shorter mountain hut oriented portion of the trek I was going to go ahead with and do with Doug. I spent a few days in town before Doug’s arrival doing a lot of walking and also went to Biarritz, France for two days while waiting for him to get in.