It is a new day here in the Algarve, and really one of the things that we came here especially to
do is to hike. Unfortunately, since I've been under the weather, Bill a little bit under the weather,
we haven't been able to do as much hiking as we wanted, but we've saved the best for the day when
we feel the strongest. We are going to hike the Seven Hanging Valleys trail. It is an out and
back trail, which means it's one direction. It's 11.5 kilometers if you make it both ways. Our
plan, since we don't have the stamina we normally do, is to hike all the way to one end and hopefully
catch a cab back. If not, I guess we'll be walking the whole 11.5 kilometers.
We're gonna figure out why it's hanging valleys, and why are there seven of them. I guess we'll have
to count. This cat just jumped into my lap. Are you gonna leave now? No. I don't know what to do.
Here's a map of what we're doing today. We are starting in the furthest point east, heading west,
with the sun at our backs. Here are the 7 hanging valleys, at least when we expect to see
them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Then we hit here, and hopefully we find a cab back.
It's a beautiful day - all the rain, we left that behind in the north,
and we're really looking forward to exploring this part of Portugal.
Our starting point for this walk is Praya Marina - Marina Beach, and it's beautiful.
The rock formations that around here are stunning. This beach is extremely popular in
the summer months, but as you can see, in early November, it's pretty uncrowded. It's amazing.
In a number of places along here, they've got these - I don't know - sinkholes, I guess you could call them.
We can't actually see the bottom. This one we can hear the ocean in the bottom of,
but can't actually see the bottom. I can't see anything. It's way down there.
If you do decide to come along the trail, beware there are no bathrooms. We've come to our
first village, and we're gonna see if we can find ourselves a bathroom by way of buying a coke or
coffee. There aren't many along the route, at least, but this village with the beach actually does have
a set of bathrooms for free. Just a quick update. My AllTrails app says that we've
gone about 1.5 miles, and we've been walking for about an hour, so I guess
that's what, a third of the way done? Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way done.
So far, I think I'm feeling pretty good. We'll see if we can keep the pace up. Actually, that pace sucks.
We don't stop [the app] while we're videoing, so we should be able to keep that pace up.
As we're walking along here, there's a beach every few hundred yards.
It's just lovely. The weather's great. The waters are this nice tranquil aqua blue
color. It's great - and we've caught up with this giggly French tour group, which is kind of funny.
We love them. And now we're giggling. This is a lot of stairs.
At a number of the beaches along here, you can take little boat rides and i think they're about
30 minutes, costs 15 euros, and they pop you into 6 or 8 caves - I'm assuming,
depending on the tide conditions, but they look like a lot of fun.
All of a sudden, we're walking in a forest. You get a little bit of everything on this walk.
These pine groves are totally different from the first part of our walk. Looks like we go this way.
It's kind of nice to have the cool shade. Ropes always mean an adventure!
Now I'm confused - which way do we go? I thought maybe it was left AND right at the same time.
This part is slippery. You might want to get out of my way, unless you want to get tumbled onto.
That's why I'm recording it. Oh good, thanks.
I knew he'd make it.
Some beautiful and exclusive homes here hanging on the cliff. Almost feel like I'm in Greece.
We've seen fishermen at multiple points while we've been walking, and it's so impressive because
they are fishing from the top of the cliffs. What kind of fish and what size would they be catching?
We haven't seen any yet, but I have to imagine these fish are huge.
Stairs. What goes down, must come back up. We've done a lot of these.
We made it. That is either the end or the starting point, depending on your perspective.
Time to see if we can find a cab home. We're done. Our feet are tired and we're pretty hungry. Yeah.
Here are some statistics about what we just did. We walked for 3 hours and 10 minutes. We went
4.5 miles and we gained 2,316 feet of elevation,
which also means we went down 2,316 feet. All right, so not bad, and
my AllTrails app also says that I burned 1400 calories which I intend to go eat now.
So what did you think of the trail - would you recommend it? Yeah, I'd definitely go give
it a go. It's a little bit rugged in places. We chose sandals today. I think we both
wish we'd have had proper hiking shoes. Our active sandals, which apparently are what they're called,
were just barely up to the task. Tennis shoes would have been a better call for this path, but the
hike was really nice. I would highly recommend it. The views are amazing. Fantastic views pretty
much all the way. The cliffs are just incredible, so I'd really recommend it if you're in this
area. I didn't think the hike was too hard. It said it was a moderate difficulty, and I would
agree with that. Yeah, nothing was too terribly difficult - just, there's lots of little rocks and
your feet kind of slip on them a little bit, so better shoes would have been better. Well, we called
an Uber, and it's a whole 6 Euro back to our car, so we are thrilled about that. Money well spent.