Day 7 - 20 August: La Mina to near Candanchu

This was a 17km all-day walk from one water pipe to another, with no drinkable water in between (too many cows and horses).  It was a particularly memorable day with a short but steep climb up a rocky saddle, and through quite a narrow gap which led us to the entrance of a wide, flat, expansive mountain pasture with many horses and cows grazing.  It kind of reminded me of climbing up the Mangatepopo saddle in Tongariro National Park and entering South Crater - except this flat area was grassy with many animals.  We even carried on to a lake, just like the Tongariro Crossing.

 

 The lake, Ibon d'Estanes (1,780m) is a hydro lake very close to the French border.  There were a lot of French walkers relaxing around the lake. Jill and I headed off to find a geocache near the lake.  To our dismay there was a group of people having a picnic right where we wanted to search, and they looked like they weren't going to move away any time soon.  After waiting for a bit Jill and I decided to approach them and explain about geocaching.  We managed to do this with a mixture of English and French.  They became very enthusiastic hunters and were most interested in our GPS's as well.  After a few minutes the well-hidden cache was found with lots of cheers from our new friends - here is a group photo.

We continued on for several hours in the heat looking for the next water pipe as described in our guide book.  It looks very basic - but so welcome! - cold, pure water piped down from from high in the mountains.  Now we could stop after a 10 hour day.  We were actually in France overnight at this location!

 The great thing about this campsite was an abundance of wild raspberries which we spent some time picking.  In the evening a large flock of sheep with bells on came munching their way right past our tents (note Jill guarding their tent!).
The sheep seemed to know where they were going as there were no other people around.