The morning walk was fun. We ran into several people whom we had met already. When we left we walked along a sea wall to Getaria. Lots of people walking back and forth. People in scuba gear fishing in the water below, we thought they were seals. And lot of bicyclists.

It was a pleasant walk along the ocean.

Once in Getaria, we heard music, the Town Band was out and practicing then we turned inland and of course up.

At one point we noticed all these sheep in a line and these backpackers in the distance and wondered where are the going? We checked our map, somewhere we missed a turn and had to go back.

We continued walking along country trails then roads and started seeing the next town in the distance, Zumaia.

There was a long steep walk into town, we followed the yellow arrows and somehow missed one again, just a little backtrack this time.

We were hoping to find a grocery store if market open but it’s Sunday and everything is closed up. We are quickly through town and heading up again

We were already tired at this point, I believe we had walked about 9 miles so far. We had a choice to continue on main trail of take the alternate which appeared shorter. We made the wrong decision by choosing the alternate . The pictures are lovely but as we went on the trail got narrower, we saw no more hikers and the signs all but disappeared. Our phones had no service and the trail went from rugged to dangerous. We had to scale hillsides that were so steep we were grabbing handfuls of grass to stay vertical. Then we had to walk along the cliffs edge, down one side of shale and up again, over and over.

Finally we left the shore but it didn’t get much better, we somehow were on the correct trail and made it to a road up and out only to turn into the woods onto another really tough section.

https://www.relive.cc/view/vQvxpPzo79v

At this point we had walked 3 miles in about 3 hours. Once in the woods it didn’t get much better, there were now signs but they were conflicting, we went one way only to have it dead end more then once. The way marked with an X over it was actually the correct way. We came out of the woods to cross over a road and finally into Deba. We made it into town and got a bed at an albergue at 8:pm. We had been walking 11 hours and managed just a little over 15 miles. There was a lot of back and forth in there, it was a very frustrating and a very long day. We were so beat neither one of us had taken any pictures in the last few hours leading into Deba.

Until tomorrow..be well