Spain 2023: Walk Abanilla desert (8km)

In the morning, we wanted to go on foot through the desert to Baños de Fortuna, a walk of about two kilometres. That was a disappointment: only for one kilometre could we follow a path, then we had to meander our way through the gorges and ridges. There are no paths marked on any GPS. After a while, we were able to follow an almost completely dried-up riverbed that ended at the road. Jack took advantage of the sparse water cisterns to refresh himself briefly.

We followed the roadway for about three hundred metres and decided there not to walk as far as Baños: the last part was over a monotonous plain in the burning sun.

We found a dirt road that we hoped would take us back to the dirt road where our autos were parked via a diversion past citrus groves. That was not the case, it turned in the wrong direction, but we did find a place where we could descend back into the deeply cut riverbed. That would cross back our outward route further on. Five hundred metres before that crossing, a tributary river emerged into the bed. To avoid walking back along the same road, we started following it. On Komoot, I saw that this route kept going in the wrong direction. Moreover, the bed was becoming increasingly boggy and difficult to walk on. So we decided to return to our steps after a few hundred metres. A wise decision, as we didn't have enough water with us to afford a long diversions... And it was hot, with a very dry wind.

Thanks to Komoot's tracking function that I had fortunately set up, we found our outward route again. A supposed walk there and back of four kilometres ended up being seven without reaching our destination.