The Road to Cadaques

Today did not start off too well as my phone didn't charge overnight and was completely dead this morning. These plug-ins are very temperamental and must be checked periodically to ensure they are still charging. Obviously that didn't happen last night. Today is a 17 km hike with many ups and downs, or undulations, as our tour owner says, along the cliffs of the Mediterranean. We're trying to decide if we want to do the entire thing or have them drop us at a different starting point. I'll let you know at the end of the post what we decided.

Today's breakfast was heavy on the carbs and I took advantage of it knowing we would be burning fuel. The croissants were right out of the oven and the baguette was also freshly baked.

This is the map of our trail for today.

This is the first of 6 pages of directions for the hike, and it was definitely a hike, not a walk. 

I can't even begin to describe the scenery we encountered today. The colors of the sea are brilliant and could never be captured on film or by an artist's brush. Such is the depth of our Lord's creation. I will just post a ton of pictures and you'll have to imagine how spectacular it truly is. 

A very rocky trail. I'm so glad Kim remembered to pack our walking sticks! They saved our bacon today.

Looking back across the sea where we spent last night.

We are at the top of the cliff here.

Kim walking up the trail.

Olives 

Kim coming up the trail behind me.

Another pic of the rocky trail.

Up and down and up and down - undulating we go.

Getting closer to the sea.

The attire for the day was au natural. The swimmer to the left of the pic is wearing a snorkel and fins and nothing else. I only took pictures from afar as you needn't see what we saw. Hikers would just shuck their clothes and go for a swim and then lay on the beach to dry out. Of course they just stop on the trail to pop a squat too. No modesty issues over here.

Lots of Sunday boaters in the coves.

We stopped for a break at a campground beach about 1 pm and when I checked my fitbit we had only done 2 miles of the 10 1/2 on the schedule today. Yikes! We've a long way to go. However, according to the map we've done the hardest part. I sure hope that's true. The cumulative elevation gain today is 3,121'. The highest point is only 733' so we are going up and down that height at least 4 times, over the hill and down to another cove.

I had fizzy water and Kim had still water for lunch?

After leaving the campground, we head across the mountain to Cadaques. Yep. That mountain. 

This rock pyre is for Kody. 😃

You can see the trail winding up the road.

And the trail from whence we've come.

In the distance you can see the town where we're staying tonight.

And it's getting closer!

And closer

And closer

And closer still

Our room for the night.

View from our room.

View from the balcony taken from the other side of that mountain we crossed. 

These pics were taken as we walked to dinner.

After getting cleaned up. You should have seen us when we arrived. It was 92° today and dry. When we were on a gravel road for part of the hike we ate a lot of vehicles dust. After 8 1/2 hours, we were a mess.

I got into something on one of our breaks that didn't like me very much.

Where we ate dinner - La Sirena.

 

We had paella for the first time. Surprisingly, I liked the mussels and clams best. They were right out of the sea.

So, we had not actually done the hardest part when we stopped for a lunch break. And our total miles for today was 16.5 (or 26.6 km) with 32,643 steps and was like climbing 174 floors. I'm not sure how we managed to do so much more than the plan.

It's 11:30 here now so I'm off to bed. We haven't been sleeping well. Still in another time zone I guess.