The alarm went off at 7, and my tired body said no. I got up anyway, then went out to the balcony. I saw that a) I couldn't see the ocean because it was still pitch black outside, meaning it wasn't time to get up yet and bird, and b) the stars were jaw-dropping. I looked up and saw Orion with myriad stars making up his body, and the first glimpses of the starry ocean that was the Milky Way. Satisfied with my astrological knowledge of approximately six constellations, I went to bed until 8.
We got dressed groggily and went out to the boardwalk to get to the beach. The oceans was gorgeous in the sunrise: silver and glassy, with tiny waves crashing onto the sand. Small shorebirds caught our attention, skittering on the beach, and we identified them as most likely being Little Stints. As we walked the beach, passing into El Coto Doñana, the dunes melted into gold as the sun rose; the ocean from bits of silver to licks of fire. We saw Common and Herring Gulls, a Raven who was curiously on the beach, and a mysterious shorebird we couldn't identify.
At 9 we were ready for breakfast. The downstairs free breakfast is amazing: a buffet of pastries, breads, meat and cheese and fruit slices, jelly, a literal table full of different bottles of olive oil, cereal, fruit, coffee, and juice. So a lot of food. On our way from the Matalascañas beach, we saw a sign for a trail from the beach of a 6.5 km hike going west on the outskirts of Matalascañas then to the beach. Sounds great! So we ate, packed lunch, and were off by 10:40.
We walked through some Doñana habitat for a while without actually being in the fenced-off area. It was primarily sand dunes and pines in this region. During this part of the walk, we saw Azure-winged Magpies (a beautiful, large-ish bird with a long tail and brilliant blue on the wings), Crested Larks (small birds that are brown and stripey), Sardinian Warblers (adorable warblers with an inquisitive red eye and black cap), and a gorgeous Hoopoe (a striking medium-sized bird with zebra-like stripes on the wings, a beautiful crest, and a loooong, curved bill). Then the landscape turned into a sidewalk next to the highway :(. There were a lot of nice, small birds flitting in the small pines that acted as a buffer. There was also a golf course where we saw tons of blackbirds, starlings, Crested Larks, a Hoopoe foraging, Eurasian Tree Sparrows, a couple of cute grebes (small waterbirds that dive underwater for up to 2 minutes), and a Gray Heron.
After that long stretch of sidewalk, we turned left toward the beach, with the town to our left and some natural area to the right. We got to the beach in 15 minutes, and were pretty tired. We had eaten our lunches of jamon serrano sandwiches and chips a couple hours earlier, so now it was time for a nice cold drink. Or ice cream. We found ice cream first :), so contentedly ate waffles cones with cookies and cream ice cream for me, Kit Kat for Vanessa. Then we sped-walked to the hotel in order to shower and eat dinner. It only took us 1.5 hours. We chilled for the rest of the evening and went to bed, planning on taking the bus the next day to go to El Rocío, the town with the dirt roads and horses and huge church with the Virgin of El Rocío. There was a visitor´s center near there that had promising trails to walk on. Sounded like a plan.
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| A really interesting roundabout statue |
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| A local sculptor has sculptures like this one all around Matalascañas |
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| There is a big rock in the middle of that view |
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| I scream for ice cream!! |
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