Vinoteca Lunch, Broken Down Bus, Forgetting Students (Day 3)

 Sunday was the last day of our class trip, but we had a full day ahead of us! We luckily did not have to be awake as early as the past two days but some people slept through their alarms and didn’t even make it to breakfast. As we grew further and further away from the Pueblo, I could not help but notice people walking/hiking El Camino out of my panoramic window. These people were literally hiking in the middle of nowhere. No bathrooms or “rest stops” were even in sight. I give a lot of props to the people who walk this path in its entirety. Our next stop was Labraza, a small pueblo with yet another castle. This trip was not as long as some of the others which was nice. But for those who have a hard time withstanding the motion of the bus on the windy and hilly roads, the teachers literally distributed drugs to them. This was a pretty comical moment because a handful of people actually said yes to needing one pill after Aitor (the other class’s teacher) would ask you before you asked him.

As we approached Labraza, there was nothing except fields and fields of grapevines. Our bus hardly made it up the hill, that’s how narrow the streets and turns were. Once we were outside of the bus (which had to stop because it could not keep going anymore), we began yet ANOTHER tour! Bet you couldn’t have guessed that. I really liked this tour guide. She was down to earth, easy to understand and did not drag on her talks about various town facts. Labraza had loose dogs wandering all over the town. Notice I did not call these dogs strays because they looked really well fed and seemed to ignore us because they knew exactly where they were going. This pueblo only has two entrances which is a different fun fact that none of the other pueblos had. This stop did not last more than an hour.

Labraza

Wine Cellar

The last stop of the weekend was Laguardia.  Laguardia is world famous for Rioja wine (red wine). Little did the group know, we were scheduled to eat a group lunch at the town’s famous vinoteca. A vinoteca is a place where they make wine, store it, sell it, and also eat/drink. This place also had a bed and breakfast upstairs which caught me by surprise.  The food was delicious and of course we had the opportunity to drink the homemade wine with our food.  This is all we did in Laguardia which I guess was enough to do since everyone was getting antsy to head back home.  However, we ran into a problem on our final stretch back to Madrid. Something went wrong with the bus so we needed to pull off into the nearest rest stop. At first we were told it would only take 5 minutes to fix but actually took about 15-20min. As time grew, we gathered outside of the bus and just sat on the ground in the empty parking lot in the middle of nowhere. It was actually a pretty fun time and just forced us to bond even more so than we already had the previous days. Eventually the bus driver repaired the problem and we were loaded back onto the bus. All of a sudden this girl, Chile, asked me if I had a plastic bag. I had two so I gave one to her with no problem. This girl hadn’t been feeling well all weekend so I knew right away she was going to get sick.  Just as the bus started to move she quickly got up and gestured that she needed to go outside. She took care of her business outside, but meanwhile, two girls from our trip hopped on board! If Chile did not get sick, we probably would have left without two of my classmates who said they went to the bathroom and when they came back the bus had moved. As the saying goes, everything happens for a reason. The teachers were mortified and us students were laughing because it really was a funny situation. After that the teachers were paranoid and kept checking the head count numerous times even when we were cruising on the highway. To say the least, we ended our trip on an exciting, but comical, note from the tasty vinoteca to almost forgetting two students at the rest stop!

Vinoteca