It rained all night and with our backpacks and a wet tent, we are ready to walk the second part of stage 💯. It's still raining when we get off the bus, but the sky seems to be getting a little brighter. We walk towards the centre of Albufeira and pass Cat Park, a pier overlooking the sea where many friendly cats live. We take a quick look and are immediately greeted by a cat or five. They curiously come closer to check us out and give heads. We give them a pat and continue our route a little later with a smile on our faces. We are walking on a boulevard lifted above the sea and spot an elevator to get to the beach. That will save us a lot of stairs! But too bad, it does come up but the doors won't open. So we zigzag down on foot anyway...
Albufeira is located on a long beach, which we walk all the way down. At the end we can nearly pass some rocks to reach the next beach, but the water keeps rising. One beach further, we're out of luck and have to climb over the rocks. It's quite steep, and some parts of the path are as steep as those in the Alps. Over ladders and along ropes we find our way between the beaches. That takes some getting used to, after walking so many kilometres along the Algarve on good and mostly constructed paths! A few times we are faced with a closed gate, we struggle to get over the rocks or we cannot find a path at all. So we have to go back and forth for kilometres and lose a lot of time. This makes today's stage unexpectedly intense and we arrive at our final destination two hours later than expected. Thank goodness we devided the stage in two, there's no way we would have made it yesterday...
So even after 100 stages, every metre remains a surprise...😊