Quote of the Week, Perhaps a Bit Longer

"The biological community is a vast and complicated system for sharing and distributing the energy of the sun among a diversity of life forms." ~Martson Bates

2/2/10

Euskadi; Flysh Fun

After our wonderful day in Donostia we decided we wanted to go back to Zumaia and check out the flysh up close and personal. This time we didn't hike to Zumaia, we took the bus both ways. Dan and I walked around Zumaia for a bit, we wanted to find a bank so we could exchange some money. At first we had a hard time finding a place, but we asked a few folks and in the end we were able to find a bank that could exchange our money.

At a church we passed as we walked around Zumaia

Dan found a new lady :(

After we got our Euros we went for a walk in a beautiful, green valley that we saw while we were playing on the cliffs the last time we were here. We walked by several neat old homes, one of which had a huge, beautiful garden that I was, of course, absolutely jealous of. At the end of the valley there was a staircase that led down to a small beach. Dan and I went down to explore the beach, Dan took a bunch of pictures and I collected sea shells. The beach was so tiny that when the tide is high, it's under water. It was a really neat, cool little spot.

One of the neat homes we passed in the valley

Dan going down the staircase to the small beach

The small beach we hiked down to

Cool flysh layers

We decided to hike back up to the cliffs we were at on Sunday and make a loop rather than go back through the valley. It had been raining the last couple of days so it was quite muddy and a lot of fun.

Dan and the muddy trail up to the cliffs

Dan and me on the cliffs

We then decided to hike down to the big beach, where we had a blast playing on the flysh and taking a bunch of pictures. Just to remind you, the flysh in Zumaia is the longest set of continuous rock strata in the world. They date from the mid-cretaceous period to the present, over 100 million years. The flysh is so cool when you see it up close, all the layers are like works of art and they hold so much history and information, it's crazy.

Dan and the rock horse sculpture

Flysh up close, it reminds me of a mountain scene cut from paper scraps

Dan on the flysh

Flysh in the water

Dan can't stop taking pictures, even when the tide is threatening to trap him

We had a wonderful day playing at the beach. This is such an amazingly beautiful part of the world, exploring is sooooo much fun!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

So much fun! What an awesomely beautiful day and what sticky mud! Remember the umbrella hanging on the cliff. Haha.

Renee said...

I do, I wanted to add the umbrella story to the post also, but it was starting to get long. :)

Anonymous said...

Hey! I've totally been to the spot with the horse sculpture. The rocks there were beautiful!