Easter 2019 - Day 3 – From one coastal city to another

This was the second day on the road. The route took us back into Spain, and down to Tarifa.

Approximate time out caching/traveling: 12,5 hours
Total driving distance: 433,6 km / 269.4 mi
Total caches found: 15
Total DNF: 5
Famous places visited: Faro, Portugal and Tarifa, Spain
Most memorable cache: GC4YDXB Punta de Tarifa: Al Sur del Continente Europeo
Biggest surprise: The Easter celebrations right outside our hotel
Weather: Sunny
Temperature range: 13-27°C

Narrow roads

After a nice breakfast at the hotel, and checkout, we continued the journey on narrow Portuguese country roads. Not sure we ever would have found the way to Faro without some kind of navigation device. But we made it!

Once we got to the city, narrow country roads were replaced with even narrower city streets. Finding parking was not easy, but we eventually found a spot.

Downtown virtual

We had a very specific goal in Faro, and that was the virtual cache GC7B6Z3 Serei a tal cache virtual. Almost no muggles around, and we might have been the only tourists here today. Guess the season hasn’t started yet. And maybe that was a good thing, the virtual require something that didn’t feel like the typical tourist thing to do…

To the top

After visiting Faro, the next on our plan was to find some caches in the short trail GC63BBH Aventura S. Miguel 1. We only had a few of them on the plan, and decided to do some extra. Some of them were a lot harder to find than we had thought, so we did end up with a few DNFs as well. Before we knew it, we found ourselves on the top.

The view was great! But I’m so glad we didn’t meet anyone on the way down, the road was barely big enough for one car…

Back to Spain

The Portuguese highways are effective, and brought us right back to Spain when we were ready.

Traffic, traffic, traffic

When planning this trip, we learnt that Spain celebrate Easter in a very different way than we do. Norwegians mostly flock to the mountains, hoping to see the combination of snow and sun. Spain is very different from this, and apparently Sevilla is a hot spot during Easter. So we knew very early that we did not want to get stuck in the crowd there.

So when we noticed that our route took us straight past Sevilla, we were a bit skeptical. Turns out we had every reason to be so. This was all we imagined it would be – traffic from city limit to city limit.

Just a few meters outside the city limits, it was back to 120 kmh…

What a view!

After driving for a while, and finding a couple caches, we arrived at GC703RC Cerro Cazalla “Los Pajareros”. And wow, what a view! And with the nice weather, we could see all the way to Africa! It was a bit windy at the top, but the view was so worth it!

Where is it?

We continued down to Tarifa, where we had booked parking in a tiny parking house. Our brand new rental car had all sorts of sensors and alarms, all of which started yelling intensely at me while I tried parking in there. The car did really not want me to park there! But, it was a safe and guarded place, so it had no choice!

It was eventually time to find the hotel, which was easier said than done. It was too new to find on Google StreetView, and hard to find from the main road. But we eventually found the correct spot, and got to our room – the most awesome room of the trip!

The end of Europe

Since we arrived in Tarifa so early, we headed back out to find some of the caches that was here. After picking up the tickets for our trip to Tangier the following morning, we headed down to the southernmost point and GC2GTNY Al sur de Europa.

It was extremely windy, and easy to see why people come here to kite.

Didn’t expect that!

After a couple caches more, we arrived back at the hotel. When planning the trip, we couldn’t find any information about Easter celebrations in Tarifa. So we were a bit surprised when we found out that they had celebrations – and they started and ended right outside our hotel! We could see the final stretch from our hotel room balcony!