July 4 — Mauleon

For the second morning in a row, a humongous garbage truck rudely awakened us before 5:00 a.m., as it noisily collected and crushed refuse from huge bins nearby.  After cursing at the truck and rubbing the sleep from our eyes, we carried out our usual morning routine of packing up, getting coffee, and moving down the road to our next destination — Mauleon-Licharre, in this case.

Upon arrival, the air was still reasonably cool (predicted high to be 33 degrees later today), so we hiked up the hill to check out the old “Chateau Fort.”  We were sweating by the time we reached the top, however, due to the climb and the sky now being blue and sunny and the air humid.  The view was beautiful!  Back down again at street level, we explored around the town, had a picnic by the river, and then checked into our Airbnb house, where we’ll stay for two nights (and get our laundry caught up).

After the day’s heat had begun to abate a bit, we drove (thank goodness for air-conditioned cars) about 40 minutes up into the mountains to the Gorges de Kakuetta — alas, it was a disappointing trip, as we were denied entrance because it was less than two hours until closing time.  Despite not being able to walk through and see the waterfalls and other scenic areas of the gorges, we did manage to snap a couple of pictures of the river, to show the beautiful turquoise blue colour.