Trek: Day 2

Bryan making dinner during sunset, night 2.

Bryan walking along a ridge through Belen (tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny village) made of old stone and wood houses and housing lots of goats and yappy dogs. We talked with one woman who lived there and was hacking down trees on our way in with a blunt machete. I think we were probably the strangest thing she'd seen in a long while.

A cow and mountains viewed from the mahalle of Belen. Bryan dubbed the area 'the Squamish of Turkey' after hiking for a few hours longer he changed his view, saying 'Squamish is the Southern Turkey of B.C.'

Bryan walking through another unnamed tiny village with lots of olive trees and goats.

I bought a new sleeping bag recently, and I was so happy to be warm and cozy down to 0 degrees Celsius (especially in the future).

A Roman cistern (a giant rock lined hole in the ground filled with fresh water)

Part of the trail was on an ancient piece of Roman road.

Day 2 we got up and set out - continuing to gain elevation steadily until we got to the ruins of an old Roman town, complete with walls, gates, arches and eventually to a huge old cistern. We were particularly glad to find the cistern because somewhere in the ruins we got lost and ended up bushwacking through manzanita on a scree slope to find it. This was the 2nd time we had to whip out our GPS after completely losing the waypoints.

The first time was about half an hour before this when the directions in the book said, "go along an olive grove until you turn left at the large tree." This was all well and good except there were at least half a dozen olive groves.

Day 2 was our most GPS intensive day - we had to whip it out a few more times before we finally stopped for the night 6 hours after we started hiking. We only went a few miles that day because of detours, getting lost, and lots of elevation gain; the weather was still clear though!