Chuck's News: Day 7 - Hiking the Fisherman Trail - Day 3 - How Many Times A Day Can You Say “Wow”?

If muscles can get sore from overuse, can the same thing happen to your eyes from working hard to enjoy the scenery?

Today’s walk on the trail was as spectacular, if not more so, than the first day. Cliffs plunging into the sea, the trail balanced on their lip, surf pounding and huge waves rolling in, stunning green ground cover and bright orange rock and sand. It is all magnificent. And the price of admission? The ability to walk, listen and see.

We were up at 8:00am today. An extra hour of sleep due to our short mileage, only 5 or 6 to do today. I fried 4 eggs and made egg and cheese sandwiches for lunch and boiled 6 eggs for breakfast. The bread we bought yesterday was the kind with tough, chewy crust and a sourdough like texture. So good, but really heavy to carry. We were not sure what would be available for food in the town we are staying in tonight so we carried enough food to see us through if necessary.

The sun was warm and comforting, streaming through our glass door onto the balcony, as we packed our bags in our south facing room. By 9:10 we were ready to start our walk. The temperature was the warmest it has been to start walking, about 53°. I started out in shorts and stayed that way all day. The sun shown through thin clouds and a light off shore breeze was blowing.

We hiked along a road back to the ocean, then turned south, staying on the road for about a mile, never more than a few hundred yards from the ocean pounding on the twisted sedimentary beds of rock that comprised the shoreline. We caught up with a man from Germany and talked with him for about 15 minutes as we walked. A very pleasant, quick to laugh person. He was walking with another couple from Germany, out for a 10 day holiday.

The trail climbed up on the bluffs and stayed there the whole day, affording incredible views both north and south and down to the waters edge. How many times can you say “WOW!”?

We leapfrogged our German friends a few times. At one point we were sitting near a boulder covered with yellow lichen, eating a snack when they passed. We got to talking about the vegetation. I kept up to show them the plant identification app we use. The plant I picked to identify came up as “Hottentot Ice”. They seemed a bit repelled by the name and sought out an alternative “Ice Plant”. After they walked on, I mentioned that the “H” word was used by Admiral Boom in Mary Poppins and thought I had better look it up. Turns out it is derogatory, not too dissimilar from the “N” word. Oops! That explains their reaction. It is “Ice Plant” from now on.

We saw about seven other hikers today, about the same as yesterday. There are people here, just not too many.

From the map, we saw our trail was turning inland to our next town. We stopped on the final bluff to let Sally drink the Pepsi she was carrying and to enjoy the scenery. We misjudge the turn in point and had one more point to walk out on. Here I saw a stairway hewn from the rock cliff that descended to the beach. I dropped my pack and while Sally waited I descended the couple hundred feet to a gorgeous sand beach nestled in between the rock ribs extending out into the sea. It was amazing to be level with the pounding surf, it’s sound echoing off the enclosing rock walls. I returned to the cliff tops and we made our way inland on roads to our town for the night, Cavaliero.

In each town we have been to all the buildings are painted white with blue trim and red tile roofs. Very pretty and very uniform. The first building we approached had our talkative German sitting outside. He had a sore foot and was waiting for a taxi to drive him to the next town where he would rejoin his friends.

We followed Apple Maps again and found our accommodations for the night, just around the corner. We contacted the owner on WhatsApp and he gave us instruction on how to get in: the door is unlocked, just enter.

It is an apartment with a living room, kitchen and bath downstairs, a bedroom upstairs and a washing machine. We quickly stripped and washed all our clothes, hoping to get them outside on the clothes line to dry before it got to late in the day. The humidity here is quite high, so things take forever to dry. No one has dryers. Electricity is expensive and most of the year it is hot and things dry quickly.

We went for a walk around “town”, checking out a small “supermercado”. We noticed there appeared to be a lot of immigrants, mostly men of Indian descent. We sat down outside a bar to consider our options for dinner and a man, woman and 4 year old child rose up in bikes (the kid in the bucket bike seat over the rear wheel on the woman’s bike). Sally asked about all the immigrants. She said this is an agricultural area. People come from Nepal, India and elsewhere to work the fields, not unlike Mexicans to the US. We also learned that this entire coastline is a National

Park. That is why development is restricted. hmmmmmm

We returned to the grocery store and bought canned pork and beans and a canned stew for dinner. Both were tolerable, but not great. Big chunks of fat floated in both in the broth. We chose not to eat those, but enjoyed the flavor they added to the dish.

We turned on the heat in the upstairs bedroom, a plug in free standing heater and got it good and hot, hoping to dry our clothes; we succeeded. Sally researched more about the route while I wrote. Finally, about 9:30pm we switched off the heat and lights and called it a night. What a great day! Lots to see, lots to learn.

Coastal road and our route