Climbing a Volcano

We found a really nice camp site near Rocher de Costaros. The owners were super friendly and had a great bar set up. They baked us hot chocie croissants and made fresh espresso in the morning. The bohemians had created a great atmosphere but they were pretty relaxed in all things, especially the cleanliness of the bathrooms....eeewwwww. I didn't think our leg strengthening exercises for africa and beyond would start this early. We had a great time chatting to them about travel and things. They were serious travellers......when we said we'd taken 9 months off from work as a big pre-children adventure, the owner earnestly frowned and lamented, "Yeah, we only get 6 months off a year....." What the?!?!? I think we need to become camping ground owners. Especially now that I know you don't really have to clean the bathrooms:)

They helped us with directions to the climbing nearby where we climbed the inside of an old volcano (after navigating around some road blocks and a nice walk to the cliff)- see below...

This place was stunning and the walk in was a little scary, given we had to scale the sides of the volcano to reach the climbs! We hope to return here one day to do some nice multi-pitch climbs (anyone interested?).

We didn't have any topo but met some really nice locals who lent us their's. Continuing to blast the myth of rude French people. However this proved to be the northern most point in France in which people were happy and able to converse with us in French. North of here it seems people's ears are more finely tuned/impatient.

The French guys were an inspiration. The better one was about 75 years old the other guy about 60. They blasted up multi pitch routes harder than our single pitch (Monsieur senior on lead) and then calmly came back down and had a sip of heart starter of some description with their pipe tobacco. I want to be like that when I'm 75:)