Mountains and Mediterranean
We booked four weeks in Cartagena, Spain, which in hindsight was not nearly enough. This area is unbelievable! Katia summed it up well one day on our way home from a hike when she gave a deep, contented sigh as she stared at the gorgeous landscape around us and randomly said, “I could just live here!”
We were right on the Mediterranean Sea and spent many days exploring various beaches. Our favourite beach was considered a “small” little beach called Cala Cortina, but we thought was perfect. It was just under an hour for us to walk there, which was a perfect balance of getting some walking in and relaxing on the beach. The beach had lovely sand for the girls to enjoy, as well as some swings. And birds. So many little birds.
There was a restaurant right on the beach, which was always packed with locals. They threw all their stale bread out for the birds, and our girls happily purloined some of this to bring to where they would be sitting and break into tiny pieces for the birds. They thrived at this little beach, enjoying a mixture of playing in the water, digging and building castles and structures in the sand, and spending literally hours watching the birds.
The restaurant right on the beach was perfect for Jon and I, as well. We were able to sit at a table where we were about 10 feet away from the girls on the sand. We could be watching them play and relax from a comfortable, sand-free chair and enjoy a Café Asiatico, split a bottle of rose wine, or have a small snack. While the restaurant was busy, they had no problems with us spending hours sitting at our table, relaxing and slowly enjoying our drinks and/or snacks. That is, after all, the Spanish way!
Everything in Spain goes at a very slow and relaxed pace. No one seems to be in a rush, everyone lingers over meals and/or drinks, and life is just a much slower pace. In the best way possible. It’s such a difference from the frantic pace of life in Canada, where everyone seems to be rushing from one place or thing to another, trying to juggle it all, and where stress, chaos, and anxiety just seem to be the norm in your daily life. So, no one cared at all if we sat at a table for 2 hours enjoying a bottle of $9 CAD wine. I feel like in Canada, they would be anxious for you to move on since you’re barely spending any money and they could seat someone else there to make more money off. Even when we did ask for our bill the one time, noticing how busy the restaurant was and thinking they may want our table, the waiter waved us to enjoy, not rush, he’d bring us the bill in a while. So, we sat there for another half an hour enjoying the sunshine and watching the girls play.
There were quite a few other beaches that we drove to and explored, including one in a small town in Portman, a couple of different beaches in the bigger and flashier La Manga area (think Cancun vibes), and a beach in another even smaller town west of Cartagena. While we made a few trips to La Manga and Portman beaches, Cala Cortina was 110% our favourite beach to visit. While we could have explored many more beaches, we just kept getting drawn back there instead.
In addition to the beaches, there were mountains and valleys to explore. This provided a mixture of steeper inclines/declines, mild to moderate inclines/declines via long switchbacks, and plenty of relatively level terrain for hiking. In short, it was a great balance of options for hiking!
It’s hard to say where our favourite hike was, as there were so many great hikes we did! But one thing that definitely stood out to the girls was hiking up a mountain to abandoned castle ruins that overlooked Cartagena. There were walls around the castle at the top, and we walked all the way around. For the life of us, we couldn’t figure out how to get into the castle. God bless our little explorers because after we completed a circuit we sent them off to run around and explore and find the way in. We saw people inside and knew there must be a way, after all! And sure enough, they found it on the second lap around and came to show us. It was not obvious and did involve some climbing to get in there, so was only for the more agile explorers. But, I suppose anyone making their way up that steep incline to the top would probably fit that description!
The other nice thing about these ruins was that they were completely free to go into and not maintained in any touristy fashion. They were just there. Which made them feel a little more authentic than some ruins we have been to in the past. It was fun to walk through and try to look around us and guess what each of the rooms would have been for. The girls were very observant and came up with some solid theories that we thought were pretty accurate. It was amazing to see them thinking back over their experiences in medieval castles we explored in the UK and comparing them to the remains they saw in front of them to figure out what the rooms were. We really are proud of their ability to think critically about the things around them all the time.
They were also very proud to find a broken piece of tile from the castle floor. We all were interested to see how deep the colour went into the tile. It makes sense as to why the tiles are still coloured to this day! They decided they wanted to bring the piece of tile with them to gift it to their friends in Oria, who do tile mosaics. We told them that was fine, but they had to carry it. Katia happily carried the tile with her through treacherous terrain and inner city walks for a couple of hours so she could bring it to her friends!
This area is so stunning, with such a variety of natural beauty and scenery to get out and explore. There were so many other areas we wanted to explore and hike. Cartagena has become one of our favourite places in the world. A place that just resonates with all four of us. We will definitely be back here in the future and look forward to exploring more in this area!
