Fisherman's Trail Day 5 - Odeceixe to Aljezur

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
9/29/2024	14.6 miles	7 hours 25 minutes	533'	3.4	625.9 miles

Still no word from Glen, but I heard he is okay from his sister. He was able to get a message out with our satellite messenger device. I never received the message. Maybe related to the fact that I am using an e-sim?

All of us liked the town of Odeceixe and wished we had more energy to explore it. Today was a big mileage day, and I am amazed I was able to do it. My foot felt much better than normal even at the end of the day! I don't know how long it will last, but it feels so exciting to be able to hike longer miles again.

It was sunny and hotter today. Many people wear shorts and a short sleeve shirt. I slather on sunscreen but feel my skin is frying. Today was not a hard day, just long. I have shin splints and got a blister on the bottom of my foot due to constant sand in my shoes. My shoe fabric is very porous, so the sand pours in. A better choice for the trail would be shoes with less porous fabric + short gaiters. 

I have to remind myself that the route Macs has is not the Fisherman Trail. It's the "Best of the Rota Vicentina" which includes the Fisherman's Trail as well as other trails of the Rota Vicentina. Today's route on our Macs app left the Rota Vicentina. We decided to stay on the Rota Vicentina instead. It became confusing again in the town of Riga, where the blue & green blazes disappeared, and we only saw the red and white blazes of the Historical Way. On further study of the physical map, it doesn't look like the Fisherman's Trail is 100% contiguous. So, at times, you do need to take the Historical Way to reach the next section of the Fisherman's Trail. Ah. We followed the Historical Way markers. Luckily, every once in a while, we'd get a trail marker which lists which town the trail is headed to, as well as the number of remaining kilometers. So even without a paper map, we could tell we were going in the right direction. We stopped in Riga for a break and a tea. 

Our hotel in Aljezur is nice. What makes it nice? Easy to use key cards and a large supermarket next door. No microwave in the hotel room, but the receptionist said she would microwave food for me, so I bought a frozen meal from the grocery store. We ate outside next to the hotel pool. Aljezur is a bigger city, so not as cute as the smaller towns we've been staying in.

View from the front door of our hotel room.

Our hotel room

View from the hotel's dining room, where we went for breakfast.

Hiking back down to town.

Walking by a herd of cows in town.

A river leading out to the ocean.

I never saw poop on the trail. 
But we did see huge amounts of toilet paper.

Stork on a sea stack.

Fisherman on a sea stack. 
We couldn't see any trail to get out there.
Sometimes the waves would be crashing all around them.

More fishermen.

Stopping at a cafe for the tiniest cup of tea.

The sun exposure is real....

Dinner at the hotel.
This hotel was in a larger city and had a large grocery store next door.

I found a delicious quinoa veggie mix in the frozen food isle. Lucky day!
No microwave in the room, but the staff was nice enough to microwave it for me.

Picture out of order - from the hike.