Monte Pindo and the end of the Earth

It's been a ridiculously busy week this week, though some things never change. We finally got our paper out on Monday, though I have another two somewhere near the end of the pipeline and hope to have them out before Christmas. The rest of the week was busy with getting these a little closer to completion, though Monday night I went out to another film at Cine Europa to see Breath (Soom) by Kim Ki Duk, one of my favourite Korean directors.

Breath is not a film of clear logic and linearity, but it is a beautiful film of deep sentiments and powerful imagery. Kim Ki Duk manages always to lighten his dark subjects with the absurd, and wonderful scenes of a women in a seemingly continual battle with the past singing a love song to an unknown, suicidal man on death row are so full of confusing feelings that you can't help but laugh. The film is going to leave you with questions, which probably don't have answers, but for me I'm happy with this. I would recommend this film if you want some answers to the questions that Herzog was contemplating.

Today has also been a long day as 12 of us, mostly from Couchsurfing, headed out to the coast of Galicia for a day of hiking to the top of Monte Pindo, a rocky hill, some 600m high (11 mile round trip) right on the coast, overlooking Fisterre to the North and the Atlantic to the West. It took us some four hours, including breaks, to make it to the top of this very rocky mountain, but the view was well worth it. In fact this is without a doubt the most stunning view I've seen in Galicia. I have a lot of photos to go through today but I've put together a panorama from the top for now. The large size is pretty huge, and there are still some artifacts from the large contrast in light that can be seen in the sky. Still, click through to see the whole thing in full detail.


In fact, coming down we watched the sunset from half way and the last quarter of an hour was in almost complete darkness. We were exceedingly lucky that we left without a single twisted ankle!

Anyway, tomorrow I have to get on with some work for my trip to Dublin next week and will be cooking in the evening for a bunch of Korean friends. If my kimchi dumplings aren't just like their mothers' I'm going to be in some trouble!