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Published: January 4th 2011
Arcos is a pretty small place, not that it isn't worth a few days, but we get itchy feet. So yesterday, after breakfast we pointed the car east and did a loop through the beautiful country in Andalucia's interior.
The landscape is covered in velvety green right now as the winter wheat comes up and cows and windmills dot the rolling hills. There are some beautiful mountains so we stopped in Bosque, a mountain town where the permits for hiking are distributed, and grabbed a map. We decided on a trail that goes straight up a mountain called Torreon, about 1700 meters high and it was awesome, a great little butt-kicker of a hill. We made it up the 5km in about an hour and a half, through a pygmy forest of some unknown tree that looked like holly oak, through the only native Spanish palms (short little bushy things) and up into the rocky crag summit area. The views give you a nice feel for the lay of the land, Morocco to the south, white mountain villages below. Great way to spend a few hours and we needed the exercise. Along the way we saw a bunch of the
mountain goats that make the mountain their home and the giant vultures that the woman at the Nature Park office was adamant that we look out for. They weren't elusive.
video at the summit Great hike.
From there we kept moving towards Grazalema which is yet another stunning white village that would have been nice to spend a night in. Next time. After a quick stop we pushed on to Ronda
(fascinating and dizzying history here) , another crazy cliff-top town. Natural defenses came in handy at one point. The quick version: 27,000 years ago someone painted the walls of a cave (cueva de la Pileta) near Ronda. The Celts came around in the 6th century BC, then the Phoenicians used it as a hang out and called it Acinipo (pronounced phoenetically. get it?). Then the Romans. Then the Visigoths. Then the Moors. Then the Christians. Then Napoleon. Good heavens. We figured such a popular place deserved a look. It's a happenin' place these days with a population of about 40,000, the largest of the hill towns. The giant Tajo gorge splits the place in half making necessary the Puente Nueva, a rather magnificent bridge built in the 18th century to connect the two halves of the
town. It's lovely.
The streets of Ronda were JAMMED with Spanish people on holiday and the main drag is a great pedestrian highway lined with shoe stores (every third store in Spain appears to sell shoes...the women are all about knee-high boots and apparently buy lots of them to keep 4 million shoe stores in business), churro stands, tapas bars...it was mad chaos there the other night. All of Spain must be on vacation.
We made it back to Arcos after dark and coming into the impossibly complicated tangle of streets from an unfamiliar direction. Let's just say it was a stressful way to end the day...we were terrified to end up in the mazelike old town with its mirror-eating confusing narrow streets. We finally found the familiar way in and Todd did the most amazing and efficient parallel park job I've ever seen. That car was parked in the first spot we found (not an easy task in and of itself) in about 3 seconds. Casa Blues was a welcome sight after a long day and Nick, our host, very graciously allowed us to spill our day all over him over a glass of wine.
video from yesterday morning at Casa Blues
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Chuck
non-member comment
your journey
Hey Alisa and Todd, I sure do enjoy reading your stories. Very descriptive and I appreciate your understated humor. Thanks for keeping me in the loop--it's a fun way to enjoy your vacation. Chuck