Day Nine La Massana and the Telecabina

Llorts flora
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The day dawned with the promise of a fine day and the wind had dropped to a stiff breeze rather than a roaring gale.

Starting with our customary hike into Ordino we headed for Andorra again. The walk as far as La Cortinada was chilly as we were in shade all the time. That would be fine if we could get to a brisk walk but it's slow going and my hands were frozen until we hit some sunshine.

I took a lot of photos as Alex says she wants to see everything I've talked about and we made Ordino in good time. On the way down to Andorra we saw the cable car (Telecabina) in La Massana was operating so we decided to call in on the way back and take a ride to Arinsal.

La Massana cable car view
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Lots of people in Andorra today. Saturday shopping is obviously on the agenda. We dropped in first for an hour at the Internet Cafe and I caught up with Alex; our bus is confirmed back to the airport so I'm relieved about that! That hour goes very quickly.

Looked around a couple of department stores then we went to catch the bus.

The bastard bus driver went past twice without stopping because there were cars and traffic in the way so in the end we abandoned our little blue buses and caught the red and white interurbana to La Massana. The fare cost .25 cents more and the driver was suitably rude. I don't think Andorra has any concept of customer service.

La Massana Telecabina
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We walked up to the Telecabina station and of course it's the gateway to Vallnord so there was a dizzying array of activities listed; all we wanted to do was go up on the cable car and come back. Of course the girl at the desk didn't speak English so it took a while to establish what we wanted but “up and down” seemed to work. It cost us €9.50 each.

It's a long way up but Arinsal has loads of sporting activities. We were behind a group of mountain bikers who take their bikes up in the cable cars and come down the ski trails. It wasn't very busy but there was a chair lift if you wanted to go up to the Pal sector. We gave that a miss although I'm sure it would have been fun. So, I took photos and we went back down.

Getting in and out of the cars is fun as they never actually stop, they just slow down and you hop on or off. Coming back the wind had got up a bit and the car swayed in the breeze as we hovered over La Massana. The view was incredible.

After that we came home. Caught a bus to Ordino, and finally a bus driver who didn't oust everyone at the other end of the centre but took us back to the Tourist Information Centre. We were going to get an ice cream but the Comerc Babi was closed and I wasn't going into a bar to get an ice cream!

The apartment was still cold and we turned the oven on again – even before we made tea! Had rice and lentils, which turned out quite nice.