Galicia Rural Profundo

Last weekend Jose and I went with my parents to the Sierra del Caurel in Galicia. It's one of the mountain ranges in the area. Since it takes about 3 hours to get there we decided it would be best to stay in a Casa Rural, so Jose and I searched the world wide web and found Casa de Chaos, made a reservation and hit the road.

Casa de Chaos was in a small, very rural village called Paderne, hanging off the side of the mountain somewhere around where Jesus lost his sandal (as the Spanish say..."Donde Jesus perdió la zapatilla"...meaning...in the middle of nowhere...BFE).

After winding around one-lane mountain roads for some time we came upon Paderne, and the cows and sheep of Paderne. So we "parked" on the side of the road and Jose and I began our search for Casa de Chaos, dodging cow patties and sheep pellets the whole way through the village.

We finally found an old dark house with a small wooden sign covered in cobwebs that read, "Casa de Chaos". We looked inside... it was dark, damp and smelly... looked at each other...looked back inside...and then were startled by the loud eeeehaaaaaah sound of a donkey inside. We burst out laughing and said, "¡Ni de coña!", meaning "No way!"

It was surreal.



I thought for a minute and said that there was no way this was the actual house, it must be the old part or the barn. So we continued to walk around and were delightfully surprised when we saw a new, refurbished, beautiful house with a breathtaking view of the mountains. Thank goodness. I was just imagining us sleeping on a cot with the donkey.



This village was incredible. They are still the 18th century when people lived side by side with their animals. Cows, sheep, pigs, chickens all walking through the streets. There aren't separate barns away from the houses, the animals stay in the bottom section of the house.




Needless to say, we had great time, and are planning on going back.