First day carrying all of our gear. Now when we started, all of our gear was a lot more than we felt we could carry — day one of hiking was rough on our bodies and we knew we would have to purge some stuff if we were going to carry our bags. So before we left our guest house we discarded our sleeping bag liners and additional clothes we felt we could live without. The packs were still heavier than the recommended 10 percent of body weight (neither of us weigh 200-250 pounds), but Joe was determined to have a nice laptop (Mac Air) and Julie brought along her iPad. Otherwise, we feel like what remained was reasonable.
Because we already walked the non-exciting route into Aljezur the previous day, this segment of the hike starts with a steep incline, and we didn’t want to kill ourselves on our first day of hiking with all our gear, we decided to take an Uber to Rogil. This cut off about 6.5 km from the hike, which meant we would walk about 12.5 km to Praia de Odeceixe. It was a good call. The packs still felt heavy, but we got into a groove. Similar to every hike so far, by the time we got close to the end, our feet were sore. But we made it and felt good about accomplishing this goal.
Even by cutting short our trek, we still spent a good amount of time not walking along the coast. We had heard from other travelers these two sections were probably the least scenic so didn’t feel we missed much.
When we arrived our guest house was located 1/2 block from the beach. We got settled and headed to the beach. This beach is unique in that the river bends around behind it before entering the sea, so you get this peninsula of sand that is the beach/playground. Having the shallow, lazy river there is also a great place for families with very young children. Almost like the kiddie pool compared to the ocean side of the beach. Another thing we have noticed with many of these great beaches is that the slope if very shallow. During high tide you can probably walk about 100 yards before it gets much deeper than your knees. On the flip side, during low tide, the beach triples in size. All beautiful. There was a very active, yet friendly, game of volleyball taking place that included people of all ages. You got the sense it was a regular occurrence of locals, as there were teenagers playing with people our age, other little kids running around, and plenty of dogs. I took a walk to the river to get a sense if we could cross the following morning instead of walking 3.5 km into town, crossing a bridge, and then walking another 3km back to the trailhead directly across from our beach. It was a couple hours after low tide and the area I choose had a depth up to my upper legs for about 10 yards, and then the rest was shallow. Julie later took a walk along the beach and said where the river met the ocean it was not wide, but very turbulent. She walked along the river side of the beach and saw a little kid walking across the river with depth only coming up to his waist. Julie subsequently floated the river.