Adventure/off the beaten track Spain/Portugal/Morocco

Have you thought about walking one of the Camino routes through either Spain or Portugal? There are many to choose from, some more rugged than others, some along the coastlines, others more mountainous. You can spend as little or as long as you like walking these and accommodation and places to eat are plentiful on most of the routes.

Yes, and I should have mentioned I was already planning on doing that! Thanks for the reply

What time of year?

May of this year.

You could easily spend a month in Iberia. I have been to Morocco twice. It is very interesting, but if you are a single female, I would not try to do Morocco on your own.

It would be good to have more than a week for Morocco; traveling between cities often takes longer than you would expect, and I agree that the country could be challenging for a woman traveling alone. Do check at least a couple of guidebooks to see what they say on that score. I haven't been there recently enough to be helpful.

Spain is huge (I spent a whole summer there and did not go to Andalucía), and Portugal has a lot of worthwhile destinations itself. For a one-month trip, I definitely would not want to peel off a week for Morocco. Morocco + Portugal would be more manageable.

You might like to check into Extremadura, a sizable chunk of western Spain along the Portuguese border. Few Americans go to Caceres or Trujillo, which have sort of a back-of-beyond feeling. Merida has some Roman ruins and a good archaeological museum. This area is very, very hot in mid-summer, so I'd place it as early in the trip as possible. The same goes for Andalucía. So start in the south and move north.

I'm intrigued by the non-touristy cities of Ubeda and Baeza in northern Andalucía. They look picturesque and no one goes there--a hard-to-beat combination. They'll be on my itinerary when I return to Spain to see the south.

The town of Teruel, south of Zaragoza, is isolated enough that it gets very few non-Spanish tourists. It has very striking architecture. Zaragoza has definitely been discovered but is still interesting. Zaragoza is another place that bakes in mid-summer. Teruel is at 3000' and seemed a bit cooler.

There are many wonderful stops all across northern Spain from the Pyrenees in Catalunya to Galicia. Many of the towns and cities seem to be visited primarily by pilgrims walking to Santiago de Compostela. It's a great area to visit in the summer, because the coastal regions, at least, tend to be much cooler than the rest of Spain. I'm not sure what the weather would be like in May beyond the risk of rain--which is present even in July. If you care about weather, I suggest poking around on a website like wunderground.com. You do not remotely have time to see everything in a month, so I'd recommend choosing places where the conditions will be as pleasant as possible from what I'm sure will be a long list of possibilities by the time you finish your research.

The Cerdanya Valley, up near Andorra, might be quite nice in May. It is very hot in the summer. The very pretty town of Puigcerda is a good base for side-trips by bus to some of the little historic towns in the area. The larger La Seu de Urgell is also very pretty. If you chose to visit this area you could include a trip on the French Yellow Train, which makes a stop across the border from Puigcerda in the small (relatively uninteresting) French town of Bourg Madame and goes to the fortified town of Villefranche-de-Conflent.

One thing to look at sooner rather than later is how you will move back and forth between Spain and Portugal. The ground-transportation options are shockingly limited. These are the ones I am aware of:

• Overnight train between Madrid and Lisbon (restful night not guaranteed)
• Bus from Badajoz (Extremadura) to Lisbon
• Bus from southern Spain to the Algarve
• Train or bus from Porto or points north to Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, etc.)

There are also some non-stop flights between the two countries, but I don't know how frequent they will be in May. Skyscanner is a good source of information for budget European flights. I believe Porto and Lisbon are the only Portuguese cities with service from Spain.

If you're thinking about renting a car for part of the trip, keep in mind that you'll almost certainly have to drop it off in the same country where you pick it up to avoid an exorbitant supplemental charge.

By coincidence, David posted a link to this article about Spanish destinations lightly visited by the British today in a different thread. I've been fortunate to visit a lot of the mainland places mentioned, and I think it's a good selection, with the proviso that Toledo may be relatively undiscovered by the British, but many Americans find their way there. Still, it is magnificent, one of my favorite places.

The one selection in the article I found underwhelming was the Cies Islands, but I will concede that the beaches are impressive by European standards and not crowded. There are pleasant walks, but nothing exceptionally dramatic. The boats to the islands depart from Vigo which, though not a bad place, is about at the bottom of the list of all the (many) towns and cities I've visited in Spain.

There are some fairly difficult hikes in Southern Spain. I think you can search for some video on You Tube. In the same area there are cave paintings that aren't replicas, you have to contact the owner of the property to give you a tour. Both of these I didn't make time for but might interest you.

I spent a month in Spain and ended up dropping plans for Portugal because I didn't have time. I didn't even have time for most of Extremadura. I did visit Baeza. It's nice but not really for me. I prefer pre-1500 and Baeza/Ubeda were built on New World money. Toledo was a favorite twisty road medieval town. The cathedral in Salamanca was great. The wine around Valdepenas (Tempranillo) was my favorite but the only real drop-in bodegas (no appointment needed) were in Jerez, where they make sherry. Jaen was more traffic than it was worth (especially because the baths I went to see were closed for renovation). Cadiz is run down and really not a great place to visit. Zamora is worth looking into. I found much more to like about Zamora than I was expecting (but I like old centers) and definitely not touristy. My favorite castles were: Olite (former home for Kings of Navarre), it was a good combination of restored but free to explore. Belmonte is the best restored castle with furnishings, Coca and La Mota are both huge hulks from the Reconquista days and not far from each other. Penafil is shaped like a ship and sits on the ridge of a hill; admission includes admission to the wine museum in town. Wine museums can be a good alternative to visiting a winery. They are old bodegas that are now available to tour and have a wine bar. Wine is cheap in Spain, from 1 to maybe 3 euros a glass. Beer is cheaper, about 1 to 2 euros a glass.

I liked the passage tombs in Antequera. They are free, include a small but nice museum and the only people there when I visited were a couple groups of school kids.