The Pyrenees 2009: Day 1

St Jean Pied de Port – Phagalette

We ran around in Pied de Port the whole morning. Anna had forgotten her jacket at home and we went to the sport store to buy a new one and we shopped food. We started our trip around lunch. The sun was shining. We walked straight and there was not so much ups and downs. The landscape was green and we saw some birds of prey.

After two hours we started to climb little more upwards. In the beginning we had problems with the breathing, but we got use to it after a while . It was a good start for us on our first day of hiking in the Pyrenees mountains, as we only had an ascent of 500 meters this day.

We saw many Griffon Vultures flying over our heads on the way down again.

Esterencuby

We came to a sweet little village, Esterencuby. We had a small break and decided to continue little further up to the gite at Phagallette. This place was warmly recommended in our guidebook.

We came up to the little gite, some guests have all ready gathered at the terrace, drinking bear, smiling at us and all looking very relaxed. We both where exhausted and hungry. The gite was full but we could set up our tent in the field in front of the gite,  We took a shower and our energy came back, we sat down with the others and had a lovely four course dinner. This is really a nice thing with staying at the gites, dinner is served a 7 pm and you sit together with all the other guests. This way you meet a lot of different people.

The couple next to us were French, he could speak some English. They where really nice. The where as we call them, taxi-hikers, as they where only caring what they needed for the day, the rest was transported between the gites.

After the nice dinner we went to bed.