Sept 7: odds and ends

I've included some photos below that didn't really fit under any given theme.  So I thought I would stick them in here.

The first photo is obviously of a church.  It happens to be in Belorado.  However, if you look closely, you'll notice in the top of the church,  up around the bells, there are these brown things tucked into the corners of the steeple.  These brown things are actually very big.  They're stork nests and we see them quite frequently.  They have been in almost all of the towns for the past week.  However, in all that time, we have only seen one stork.  And it was out in a field, not even in a nest.  So while these nests are everywhere, their inhabitants appear to be rather shy (for that part, we haven't seen very much wildlife period on the trip.  We have seen 2 deer and that's been it, which we think is odd).

The second picture is of some stones that were standing up in a field outside of Atapuerca, which we went by yesterday on our way to Burgos.  The stones are to honor the people who lived in this area many years ago.  How many years, might you ask?  Well, these inhabitants lived in some caves in this area over 900,000 years ago.  They are the oldest documented human remains in all of Europe.  So this location outside of Atapuerca is where all of you with European descent draw your bloodlines from.  And let me tell you that the picture they drew showing what a male looked like back then is not the most handsome fella in the world.  So there has clearly been a whole lot of evolution going on over the past 900,000 years.

The last picture is just an interesting church we saw outside of Los Arcos.  What made it interesting was that it was literally built into the side of this hill.  Back in Los Arcos, we had seen some caves up behind our hotel and there was a hike available to go up and explore the caves, but our legs and our backs gave an emphatic "no" when we contemplated walking up to see what they were like.   The picture below, though, was the first time we saw a facade built in front of these caves.  If you look to the left of the church, you'll see an arch with a brown front built into the hillside as well.  To us from this distance it looked like some of the garage doors we've seen around the towns.  So at this church, those who arrive early for the service get a prime parking spot.  Those who arrive later have a little bit of a walk ahead of them, and hopefully they aren't afraid of heights.

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