Ermita del Moral

Just one week after the festival of comics in Barcelona, my friend Nusense came to my region, Cantabria, for a new adventure (man, I see you more than my family!!:D). Her ryanair flight from London Stansted landed at 17:50 at Santander's airport and then we went to a nearby shopping centre called Valle Real to buy our... erm.. "tools" for next day: a tent, a pair of boots for her, barbecue fire liquid and some junk food as well. After that, we went to her hotel room to try to build the tent for once, listen to some music and hang out at the streets of Santander.

Next morning, we woke up very early and took a Renfe train with destination Pujayo where our hiking route was going to start. Initially, my idea was to cross the Saja natural park until Cabezón de la Sal where we could take a FEVE train back to Santander (sleeping over one night in the middle). But in the end we run out of time and decided to spend the night at the church Ermita del Moral, where there is also an attached mountain refuge.

The sun was shinning and we had a very pleasant walk with great views of the mountains. While I was walking I noticed something strange in the landscape, can you see how the mountains are overlapped in the blue picture?

We got to see different animals, especially lots of horses. We also surprised a group of deers while we were walking. I had never seen so many deers together!

Finally, we got to the church Ermita del Moral. The refuge, attached to it, was open and had a fireplace. In front of the church there were horses grazing on a beautiful flat field. I wanted to camp out there but Nusense preferred to put the tent near some trees so we could get the wood for the bonfire from there.

When the sun faded away, Nusense started the bonfire and I was a bit scared of that. She was also scared about wolves comming from the woods, so after an argument we moved out to the refuge. And after that, the funniest bit of the day happened: I went out to get some wood for a bonfire at the refuge but outside it was very dark and foggy so I ended up getting lost. Thankfully, I had taken by chance my phone with me (I forgot my GPS in my rucksack!) and Nusense helped me out by calling me and shouting my name. After 50 minutes, running in the woods I managed to get back to the church, sweating and a bit scared.

We couldn't sleep all night because the refuge was very cold and the floor was uncomfortable (we should have bought a mattress and a sleeping bag). I lend some of my clothes and my hat to Nusense and also a special survivance blanket aimed at preserving the natural heat of the body.

Next morning, as soon as the sun had rosen, we set out for Pujayo station again. Although we didnt have too much time, we managed to make it for the train that we had to take in order to be at Nusense's room before the check out time. Próxima parada?? :)

Barcelona - Cómic festival 2008

At the end of 2007, I made a post saying that i was feeling like starting new things in my life, especially drawing comics again and making some music. Since then, although I gave up the music thing, I have drawed three short comic stories, visited the famous festival of comics in Angoulême and made several meetings with other artist friends (you can keep track of our meetings at our shared blog). I presented those three comics to different contests and fortunately, one of them won an accesit in the contest "Creacomic", supported by a Spanish bank called Caja Mediterránea. You can see the pages of that comic in this post.

The award consisted of 500 Euros (15% for the treasury) and also (as a nice surprise) a trip to the 2008 Festival of Comics in Barcelona to attend the awards ceremony. My comic story happens in a region called chelyabinsky, in the south of the Urals mountains (Russia), just after the second world war. It shows my concern about nuclear polution through facts and accidents that have happened in the past which I got to know by surfing the internet.


I arrived to Barcelona very early on Saturday and I spent the morning in the festival looking at the different stands, expositions, manga outfits, etc. Most of the artist friends I mentioned before came to the festival as well. One of them, Alberto Muriel had also won the same award as me.

After the awards ceremony, I went to meet my friend Nusense who was coming from London by Ryanair through Girona's airport. She said she had already eaten so instead of going with my friends to a restaurant as planned, I had a sandwich at the coach station and we went down to the beach. On our way to the beach we passed by lots of "alternative" stands near the "Arco del triunfo". There were people selling their own producs, giving exotic massages with their feet, tarot, ecologists, rights fighters, etc. When we get to the beach it was a bit chilly but we decided to lie there for a while.


After that, we went to Salou by train where we had booked a very nice hotel near the Port Aventura resort. The reason for that was that I couldn't find a hotel in Barcelona, they were all fully booked. Also, even though this hotel was very good (four stars, swimming pool, buffet breakfast, ..) it was really cheap!!. Although at this time of the year Salou was dead we had a good time wandering around the town, listening to music (see the the pic in the hotel when another guest hit the door because we were doing too much noise haha) and playing pool.

The following day I had to take the way back to Barcelona's airport and I was about to miss my flight because the trains didnt work properly that day. I made it in the last minute after making three changes and running to the appropiate terminal!! The woman at the check-in desk first told me the check-in for my flight was already closed but in the end she gave me the ticket. Nusense stood one day more at Salou because the flight was cheaper the next day and she had a day off because of a Jewish holiday. She was worried about that because she was a bit sunburnt and in that Jewish holiday you are not supposed to travel abroad (nor eat any bread).

Jaca - day 2 and 3

In my second day, as i was feeling bad of my throat, fever and headaches.. i decided to stay at the residence doing a comic and sorting out some things. I had sketched one page and a half when i heard the cleaning personal coming so i decided to take a break and went out. I walked around until i found the Camino de Santiago path that passes by Jaca. I followed it until i found a nice and calm place by the river where i decided to lay and read for a while. It was very relaxing. After that i came back home again to go on sorting things out.

At night we went to have dinner at the restaurant Rancho Grande which had a great decoration and a warming fire. We all had deer as the second plate. It was a nice place until a group of noisy Spaniards came and ruined it all...

In my third day in Jaca, I went with my friends, Steven and Angela, to see the monastery of San Juan de la Peña, one of the main touristical attractions around Jaca.

Once we got to the place a man told us to keep going up until we found a parking. Everything seemed to be very well organized. There you can buy the tickets and a bus takes you to the old monastery. Actually we did that journey on our own walking a beautiful path from which we could admire the views.

Angela, trying to get away from the paparazzis (me).

This is the main attraction of San Juan de la Peña, an old monastery embedded into the rocks of a mountain.

Some gargoilles and interesting decorative stuff in the monastery.

Then, we went to see the most modern monastery.. you can see the ruins from above through windows on the floor.

On the way back to Jaca we saw this interesting house with solar panels.

When we got to Jaca we had lunch in a restaurant and then we visited the main cathedral of Jaca which dates from the XI century. It was very nice.

A guy was praying to the virgen for quite a long time.

A traffic sign saying "in order to cross the road press the button". Somehow it reminds me about the original Japanese signs.

Jaca - day 1

This is probably the first post that I have done on the same day as the subject. Thanks to my University I have the chance to stay in the student's residence of Jaca for a week during Easter. So yesterday I came here to Jaca by car with my friends Angela and Steven (a lovely couple who are getting married soon and i hope they will be very happy in their marriage). The problem is that at the same time I've got bad throat, fever, headache and pain in my nose!! Now, the main problem is the bad throat cause i can't control it even with the antibiotics that the doctor gave me before coming.

So today, even if i wanted to join my friends to the natural park of Ordesa or go to some big mountains.. i had to stay in Jaca trying to get better. But the day's weather has been so great that i couldn't simply stay in my room so after breakfast (which is included) i went out to wander in the nearby countryside. I took lots of pictures, relax along the river and walk over lots of hills. I have also made the script for my new 4 pages comic that i will present to a contest.

I started walking to the west, direction Guasillo, a nearby small village from which i wanted to climb a low hill. I made a short sketch of the route here using Google Earth (yeah, in the residence we have internet connection and i brought my laptop). In the picture above you can see a very old bridge close to Jaca (Pte San Miguel) which was build for the Santiago pillgrims (I think). The other monument is a church from the century XI in guasillo (there are several churches from that century around).

So when i passed by that church i wanted to go on and reach the path to that hill i saw on Google Earth. But in my way there were like 7 dogs laying on the floor and when i stepped in, one of the dogs, the biggest, jump up and started barking... As you may know from previous posts, i have had problems with dogs before. This time i was very confident because i have borrowed a device to scare dogs through ultrasounds. So there i was pressing that button when suddenly ALL THE SATAN'S DOGS BECAME CRAZY because of the ultrasound and started chasing me FURIOUS!! I was shitting myself, they were more than 7 and they were very aggresive hunting dogs!! They were very angry with me, i kept pressing that button and it really annoyed them. I was out of their place and they kept following until i was again at the entry to the village. Meanwhile the owners said NOTHING. Im really pissed off with local people in the country side, id like to have something to kill their dogs, really. I didn't take pictures of that but as i couldnt go to the hill i had to wander and in the next village i found the same story, in a lighter version, so i took my camera out. As you see in the picture, the typical scene.. dogs waiting in the middle of your path and when u get closer... they come to you barking (sometimes i think their bark is "WHAAAAAAATT!!!"). These ones were not so scary so i just took the pictures as a way to explain (by the way, along the road there was a huge snake!! i got scared when it slipped away to the field.

After that i tried to avoid any other village and limit myself to walk on the hills even when there was no path to walk. I preffered not having a path than bumping into more dogs again. It was a nice and relaxing stroll and the weather was great to take pictures.

The above are some close shots of things that i have found out there today. I think some of them are interesting. Now im at my room again, complaining about my bad throat!! Let's see what will come tomorrow!!


At night we went to have dinner... and I just had a burger with a BIG glass of milk with strawberry!! hahaha


Then we watched the drumers of the Semana Santa (Easter) festivity. They were quite scaring.. i think if i was a child i would have started crying or something!