Costa Blanca

With only 12 days left in Spain we made sure to climb everyday with about 3 rest days mixed in. We were in Costa Blanca, which had tons limestone to climb that was all all within an hours drive or less. 

Joey only packed one pair of pants for the trip, so I made him take them off to wash and slipped him into something a little more fitting. 😋😉

'Twas a nice sight!

On our way to Chulilla and on our rest day, we decided to explore Bellus to see if we wanted to hit up some climbing there too. We were, once again, amazed with how much limestone Spain has! Walls on walls on walls!

We continued our journey to our last climbing destination, Chulilla. It was here were I would project an amazing 6b+/5.11a called Long Dong John. It was full of amazing unconventional tufa climbing! I was extremely excited to experience climbing tufas for 40 meters!

But.... the tufas were dripping wet.

But man oh man these tufas were seriously impressive! We were reallly sad humans.  Joey compared them to Kalymnos and said they were unlike anything he had seen!

We tried to stay optimistic that they would dry before we left. So I hopped on a different route called Peli-chi, a 35 meter 6b+. I ended up taking a big whipper on my fist attempt, one clip away from the chains at a overhung/lay back/crack section. During the fall I tapped my face on the slab below, but brushed it off (after huffing and puffing about the surprise of hitting my face/falling/being exhausted) and finished the route.

Rest day tomorrow and time to explore Valencia. 

Naked people.

And hit up the local market.

And take my first photos with a fancy camera.

A market in Spain is not a market without jamon!

And Valencia is full of beautiful architecture.

One of the big surprises was the post office! Its one of the major buildings in the city and our host told us we had to see it... It was quite the sight.

And then there is Joey catching me doing weird stuff. I dunno what is going on here. 

But I do know that these trees were my favorite of the trip!

WAHHHT, I like trees, okay!

But all Joey wants to do is monkey around!

Valencia is full of some really cool graffiti! Some of these artists are really talented.  We decided to overshare... 

  

 It was time to get some lunch, and if you haven't been to Spain then you don't know how dang hard it is to figure out when they serve food.... They close in the middle of the day and eat dinner at like 9pm! But we found a place that had one thing out of the 4 we tried to order. I did not mind because I had a nice view from across the table.

Dem hairs though. 😍🙆

 It had been a couple days so, we decided to check the Chorreras wall again! Unfortunately, the tufas were still way too wet to climb. So, off to tackle my project! Peli-chi started off awkward, but fun, went through some really fun baby tufas on blue rock, and ended in a somewhat easy overhanging lay back hand crack. I gave it another try, but fell at the same spot. Took a break to eat a freaking amazing Valencia orange (A major source of our lunch) and gave it another shot... AND SENT! Super proud of my first 5.11. One month of leading and gots me that 5.11. 

Here you can see how wet the Chorreras wall was. It never dried off enough for me to try Long Dong John. 

While climbing in Chulilla we stayed at an airbnb with the best hosts, Gary and Beatrice! They lived about 25 minutes away from Chulilla in a very secluded area just outside Lleida. They were both recently retired teachers who had just finished three years of working in China! 

While we were there they picked us about 30 oranges from the orange tress that surrounded their home. I happen to love oranges and was excited to try them! Being from Florida, I have had some good oranges, but nothing compares to Valencia oranges... They have no seeds and are sweeter than clementines. We would eat oranges at the crag and made fresh squeezed orange juice about every morning. 

We originally paid to stay with Gary and Beatrice for 3 days with plans to move on to another area, but they were freakin awesome hosts and we reallly wanted to climb those wet tufas, so we asked to stay another 3 nights with them! They were thrilled to have us. 

 

 Here is their dog Shaggy! Joey really loved Shaggy and Gary ended up getting a picture of him holding Shaggy in his lap like a baby... haha

The birdy says time to go! One more blog! :)