Sunday July 16, 24.5km/15.2mi
Hendaye (0.0km/3m) to Col de Lizuniaga (24.5km/225m) (España) +2.7km looking for gas
I left late from my campsite at Camping Alturon, since I know the store didn’t open until 10am. I walked the 1 km back to town and enjoyed the view of the Atlantic ocean. There were tons of surfers out today!
Unfortunately when I got to the outdoor store they were sold out of gas canisters.
I walked over to the official start of the HRP, which is also the start of the GR10.
The little seaside village of Hendaye was full of tourists and little shops.
After I left the main commercial district, I enjoyed a walk along the bay for a while.
Most of the houses here were similar in style with the red clay roofs!
After 3km I finally left the pavement and was hiking on a little trail. It started to climb up and I got a better view of the ocean behind me.
Because this section is also the GR10 it is very well-signed. There are these bright yellow markers at junctions along with the elevation stamped into the post.
Looking ahead, toward a huge mountain that I would pass by at the end of the day:
For most of the afternoon the trail passed through farmlands. The cows here definitely look different.
I also met a couple that was hiking the HRP. They both spoke English as their first language so it was easy to converse with them.
As I climbed higher and higher I could see down into the little villages and farms.
For an hour I traversed a bare hilltop, which was full of horses. From a distance I thought they were cows because I could hear all the cowbells… But it was actually horses wearing bells. Which I guess makes them horse-bells?
The hill was 500m in elevation so I had pretty good views all around me.
I thought this sign was funny, requiring you to keep a 20m distance from cows. Ha!
Most of the signs in this part of Spain are written in two languages, Basque and Spanish. I understand a single word of Basque. After I hiked around the hilltop and dropped down into a forest, I emerged at a surprising site. A tourist village!
There were even cows lying around the parking lot, haha.
It was actually a pretty big mountain village.
I checked a few stores for a camping gas canister…no luck.
My plan B is to just eat other food for dinner until I can find a gas canister. I will be passing through a couple more towns in the next couple of days so hopefully I can find something soon. At the end of the village, the sidewalk ended and I took the elevator down to the road level.
I’ve never hiked a trail that had an elevator on it! Cool. After I left the village I passed over the next hilltop which was full of old historic bunkers from World War II.
It also seemed like a wet area as it was full of these massive slugs.
Halfway through the day I had met a French girl named Lea, and we had separated near the village. At the end of the day she caught up to me, and we talked in Spanish for a little while using my limited vocabulary. Pretty soon we also caught up to another group of guys from London, both named Dan.
There is a little bar/restaurant at Col de Lizuniaga, which allows hikers to camp on their lawn. We also ordered a beer and a snack.
We also needed water, so Lea and I went down to the little fountain. Getting water is so easy on this trail!
The sun sets pretty late here around 10pm, and we stayed up talking until then, not realizing how late it was. I was pretty tired from walking in the hot weather and also from using my language brain. A pretty great first day!