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A Stones Throw from Spain in the Basque Region

Posted: September 11th, 2012 by Scott

Coming south from Bordeaux we came about as far south as you can go in France without crossing the border into Spain. We decided to spend a few nights in Basque country, home of tapas and berets. We made a stop on the way to our accommodations at the beach in St. Jean de Luz. This is a picturesque bay with sandy beach stretching almost all the way around it. It was a pretty hot day so we were thankful to be able to take a dip and relax at the beach.

Beachside in St. Jean de Luz

Our B&B was about 15 minutes into the mountains from St. Jean de Luz in a town called Sare or Sara (depending on if you’re French or Spanish), so we wouldn’t be waking up to any ocean views, but instead to the sounds of Cows in the morning. When we got in our room, I checked our phone to see if we had any service and not only did we not have good service, but our phone said welcome to Spain! Turns out the house we were staying in was only a couple kilometers from the Spanish border and the closest cell tower must have been on the other side of the border.

A look back towards St. Jean de Luz

The next day we decided to take the Petit Train de La Rhune which takes you to the summit of the a mountain near where we were staying. From the summit we could see back down to the coast to St. Jean de Luz as well as south to Spain. When we reached the summit it was still pretty early and there was quite a bit of cloud covering the lower mountains, but after not too long it burned off and we had some stunning views of the Pyrenees going east and south from where we were.

I can see Spain from here!

We decided to make the trip down a longer one and hiked it. It warned us it would be about 2 hours but it seemed destined to take much longer for us. Hiking downhill doesn’t seem like it should be that difficult (and I’m sure it was easier than the 2.5 hours of uphill hike it would have been, but by the time we got to the bottom our legs were exhausted and our hips and knees were in some pain. It was fun though and we were treated to some great vistas all the way down.