Ribeira Sacra: Parador de Monforte de Lemos, catamaran trip on the Sil River and wine tasting at a winery

Legend has it that the God Zeus fell madly in love with the beauty of the Galician land. To possess it, Zeus crossed Galicia with a river, the Miño, but Hera, her jealous wife, did not like this idea at all, so she planned a way for Zeus to repudiate this beautiful land that he had fallen in love with. The plan was to open a large wound with Zeus’ lightning bolt in Galicia, in the place where the god had created the Miño, thus disturbing its beauty with this impressive gorge in the Ribeira Sacra area, so that Zeus would fall out of love. Zeus was enraged when he saw what her wife had done to her and as her punishment he sentenced her to wander forever between the slopes of the wound that she herself opened and that she covered with another river, the Sil.

That wound is still open today and it is none other than the Sil Canyons, the result of Goddess Juno’s jealousy for this wonderful land.

Zeus met with her wife in a remote place in these lands and forgave her, both returning to Olympus. This meeting place was Os Peares, the point where the Miño and Sil rivers meet.

This Galician region, known as the Ribeira Sacra since the s. XII, is located in the south of the province of Lugo and north of Ourense, in the center of Galicia, around the courses of the Miño and Sil. The area is dotted with Cistercian monasteries hidden among forests on both banks of the rivers, as well as wineries, fortresses, medieval bridges or abandoned villages, such as Belesar, visible only with the decrease in the river’s flow.

Wine area with D.O. Ribeira Sacra, the main grape that we can taste is mencia, but also godello, grown on terraces next to the Miño and Sil, between the spectacular canyons formed by the rivers.