Day 4: Bidarray to St Etienne de Baigorry

Another very steep climb through hot mountains today. At the top we realized that the soft peaty ground was croiss-crossed with deep crevasses with no obvious bottoms.  This scared us a bit as we realized we needed to pay closer attention to where our feet went. We climbed over the top with flocks of shaggy sheep and sheer cliff edges with the ever incredible views of the green wet Pays Basque.  We found water in the pass and took lunch in the forest just as a rain started.  The climb out of the pass was humid and seemed like a rainforest at times. Another long end of day road walk led us into St Etienne where we could not find the campground so we followed a series of hand written signs and with our mangled french navigated our way into our first gite d etape (hostel).  Here they served us the most delicious traditional Basque meal of chicken, salad, cheese, cherry, bread, wine and more gateau basque.  The fare for demi-pension was so incredibly reasonable that we realized how much we loved gites and would try them more often (since wild camping has been a bit difficult to find).