From Marseilles it is time to drive east towards Nice and Monaco and the Italy border before turning northwards for a few days in the Alps. But on the way we want to visit the Verdon Gorge, a very popular and scenic gorge. It is also the direct way to Monaco even though it is not the fastest.
Soon we leave the coastline and reach the outskirts of the mountain, they are quite jagged and at every point it seems that the gorge is just one bend away.
We decide on a hike through the Saint Maurin Natural Reserve, it seems it has quite a few attractions on a short hike and it also allows us to find a geocache. The start of the trail is a steep ascent as we pass by the Barbin Cliffs and make our way up.
It is surprising how fast and far we climbed, the next time we look down we climbed a significant distance. Even the chamois are surprised, wait chamois? We are very excited about them, only one of us has even seen them, they are like this mythical creature and now they are just a few feet away, soooo cool!
The rest of the hike cannot reach the high of seeing a chamois even though it tries with a nice waterfall on the loop at the top.
There are also ruins and old roads to explore, quite a few attractions on the short trail.
The other major attraction is a troglodyte house or a cave dwelling. It can be entered and explored from inside which is quite exciting as we weren’t really able to visit many till now.
It even seems to continue further into the mountain, likely an area that was used for storage and we explore everything thoroughly before moving on.
We continue on following the gorge and soon arrive at a viewpoint that allows great views over the Verdon Gorge, we can clearly see how narrow it is and it would be great to go visit it but there is no time today to go down to the river.
It is late so we now hurry towards Nice and Monaco but ultimately decide to skip the stop in Nice and stop in famous Eze instead before having dinner in Monaco and then driving north to our accomodation.
