Hello, how are you?

I'm Mikel Pikabea, founder and tour guide of “pickaB” boutique tour shop, a 55-year-old basque native from Hondarribia. Hondarribia is a very charming fishing town located in an exceptional enclave of the Basque Country, right on the border with France and halfway between San Sebastián and Biarritz. I dedicate myself to the laudable task of organizing and guiding private tours throughout my homeland (Euskal Herria in our native language, euskera). 

I have a heterogeneous background, and I have had different occupations throughout my life. In my youth, I was trained as an electronic engineer. I also studied philosophy at university, and I have been a certified Tai Chi and Chikung instructor for more than 25 years now. But one, no less important, facet of my development was growing up in a family with close ties to both the land and the sea. Such a childhood gave me the immense fortune of being able to share and experience, in first person, the connection that my grandparents still had with our environment. And to share, in a broad sense, moments of deep respect and connection with a way of life intimately integrated with the natural environment.

I never knew how to abstract myself from the influence that the world in which I grew up produced in me. Outside of school, I spent most of my time in the farmhouses of my maternal and paternal families: sea and mountains. The orchards in their different seasons: my grandmother Maria, making sheep’s cheese, gaztanbera (sheep milk curd), lukainka and txistorra or preparing the freshly slaughtered lamb or pork in such various recipes. The different seasonal harvests of vegetables and fruits; the haystacks at the end of June and in July. My dad hand-fishing for trout in the stream… picking walnuts, chestnuts, and mushrooms in the forest. Rock fishing for octopus, crabs, shrimps, rock-fish, breams and conger eels with my grandfather Ramon.
All this, soaking up the stories that came from their lips to my ears, and that I listened in enchantment. Stories of my people, our places, traditions, and ways of life and how they laughed and cried through the joys and sorrows that accompanied them. Maybe that is where a certain talent for guiding originated in me and what made me an insightful storyteller with a highly pedagogical profile… This may be the reason I have long been a passionate self-educated about a wide range of fields, such as folklore, anthropology, transpersonal growth and natural integral health, and fond of vegetables gardening or mushroom foraging. As an eclectic music lover, I spend a big part of my leisure time trying to express my musical restlessness in my home studio.

I have been working as a full-time guide for several years. Whether it's the chikung and taichi sessions I lead for my students, or the excursions on which I accompany travellers in their discovery of the land, people, and culture to which I belong by birth and choice. My approach and attitude are based on the same principles of accompaniment, immersion, interpretation, and learning… Which I love because I greatly appreciate this land where I was born and where I live my life, and I am in love with travelling and sharing it.

It often happens that we do not know that we have forgotten, or that we take for granted what we have closer to us. I believe that there is a deep beauty to the Basque Country that is yet to be discovered, even by our local urbanites.

If what I am telling you resonates in any way with you, please do not hesitate to contact me. If you have seen any proposal on my website that interests you, or if you have any doubts or questions regarding any of my tours or others that may interest you, I will be happy to assist you.