Ubiquitous Eucalyptus

Today was pretty much a nightmare, but too tired to write it all down - basically, we missed a sign on the trail and ended up scrambling up and down several trails in a eucalyptus forest, and back again, beginning  to wonder if we'd have to spend the night there (with nothing warm to sleep in)...

Anyway, I'm writing this from a hotel bed, having had a hot dinner and a very hot bath, and I can tell you, have rarely felt more grateful - that goes for both of us. M was a hero, carrying my rucksack as well as his.

We were walking practically non-stop for eight and a half hours, on some pretty hilly country. And I never want to see another eucalyptus tree (which, by the way, are pretty much an ecological disaster in Portugal, witnessed by the fact that I don't think we heard a bird during all the hours we were in there). The trees in the foreground aren't eucalyptus, but on all the hills stretching into the distance, they are.

Some lessons learned:
1) When you go wrong, do NOT keep going - go back to last time you know you were right, and go on from there.
2) Your body is capable of a lot more than you think - if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, you will get there.
3) Suffering is relative - I can walk, and I am alive - news of the plane crash was on the tele when we walked into hotel.