Les Calanques
Between Marseille and Cassis, France
December 10, 2005

Description

The Calanques are a series of small, fairly narrow canyons cut into the limestone cliffs between Marseille and Cassis on the southern coast of France. I've been meaning to go there for a while, and with less than two weekends remaining here, I decided that it's now or never. Morby and I went expecting sun but cold, and instead got sun and warm, which was a pleasant surprise. We started at the Calanque de Morgiou, the second-closest to Marseille, and hiked eastwards towards Cassis, which is basically where the Calanques end. Our total hiking time was about 7 hours.

I expected that the Calanques would be a pretty neat place, from what I've heard about it, and my expectations were exceeded. It was truly awesome. I can't imagine that there's too many other places on Earth with such spectacular canyons and cliffs so close to the sea. The hiking itself was challenging, as it's not a very developed region, and we had to continuously scramble up and down rocky slopes and cliffs that were almost vertical at points. Fortunately, crazy people like me enjoy that stuff, and it keeps out people who would rather visit places in a tour bus.

Enjoy the photos!

Photos

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Large		 This is near the beginning of the hike, looking into the valley that descends to Morgiou
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Large		 Hills behind us
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Large		 Boats in the port of Morgiou
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Large		 Looking back at Morgiou as we start to head along the coast
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Large		 Looking eastwards along the coast, where the rocky points separate some of the Calanques we'll be hiking through.
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Large		 The next Calanque east of Morgiou
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Large		 Pictures Morby took of me climbing up one of the many the many near-vertical sections between the individual Calanques
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Large		 Looking back towards the west, where we came from
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Large		 Looking towards the east, where we're going
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Large		 Beach down below. Waaaay down below. I think that we were at least 350 meters above the sea here, and the cliffs plunged straight down without a guardrail in sight.
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Large		 Neat rock formations near the beach
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Large		 Cliffs towards the east
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Large		 Nice view towards the east
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Large		 Nearing our finishing point. Why this particular formation is much redder than the other rocks kept puzzling me, and when I actually find out why it's like that, I'll post it here.
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Large		 Our last Calanque, near sunset.