According to the legend, the god Zeus felt completely in love with the beauty of Galician land. To possess her, Zeus threw a river which crossed Galicia, the river Miño. But his jealous wife Hera didn’t like very much the idea of Zeus laying with this land, so she planned a way for Zeus can despise this beautiful land, whom he was in love with. Hera’s plan was: she was going to open a big wound in Galicia with Zeus’s thunder, in the place where Zeus had created the river Miño, disturbing her beauty with an impressive canyon. Zeus got really angry when he saw what Hera had done and he punished her, by wandering for the eternity    in the hillsides of the wound she had opened on the mountain. Hera tried to cover the wound with another river, the Sil.

Zeus met his wife in a hidden place between this two rivers and he forgave her, so they came back together to the Olympus. This meeting place was Os Peares, the town where the river Sil lead into the river Miño and together they continue through Galicia.

This wound is still opened today and is the canyon of the river Sil, the result of the Hera’s jealousy of this marvelous land.

This region, known as Ribeira Sacra from the XII century, is located in the south of the province of Lugo and north of Ourense, in the centre of Galicia, surrounding the rivers Miño and Sil. The area is full of Benedictine monasteries, hidden in the woods on both sides of the rivers. There are also fortresses, medieval bridges, wine cellars or abandoned villages like Belesar, that can only be seen when the level of the river goes down.

The area is full of vineyards with a certificate of origin (D.O.) Ribeira Sacra, the main kind of wine that we can taste is “mencia”, but also “godello”, which grow in terraces next to the Miño and Sil, among the spectacular canyons made by both rivers.