Seville and sickness

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20 May

I am sorry to report that I must be the only person in the world not to be captivated by the charms of Seville. It is a wonderful city with a lot of old architecture, history and culture, but for some reason it just didn't do it for me. Probably too many cities too quickly or admission prices for everything but I spent a few days walking around the cityand then hopped on the train to continue south. At one time I tried to get into the huge Gothic cathedral (which my guidebook said was free on Sundays) only to find a stiff admission price. A sign said that pensioners and unemployed persons could go in for free so I figured what the hell, I would try my luck as an unemployed person. No luck, I needed some sort of official document to show that I was officially unemployed, and even the serene smile of someone who hasn't worked in a year and a half couldn't convince the hard-nosed women behind the ticket counter.

With that in mind I decided to go to a nearby climbing area and see some fellow undocumented unemployed people. This was El Chorro, a huge limestone gorge with a convenient train stop right in the middle of it. Automatically I knew it was the right move, because as soon as I stepped into the clean quiet air I realized that I just had been having too much of cities lately. The tall limestone cliffs and the river brought back fond memories of many archaeological trips to the canyons of the Devils and Lower Pecos, where we would scramble up scree slopes looking for undiscovered rock art in long-forgotten caves, dodging rattlesnakes and dehydration throughout the days. The gorge was beautiful (without snakes!) and the climbers hostel was packed with climbers from Germany, Austria, England and Spain, but unfortunately some bad weather and then a pretty horrible head cold prevented me from getting any climbing in.

Realizing that the dormitory of a climbers hostel is not the best place to try to rest and sleep, I dragged my aching body to the train station and boarded the train for the nearest city - Malaga. There I stashed my large bag in the left luggage area of the train station, found a cheap pension with a TV and hot shower, bought some food at a market and laid down in bed for two days watching bad movies dubbed into Spanish and the occasional football game. Remembering the last time I was really sick - at the start of the trip in Mumbai - I was consoled by the fact that it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

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Photos

Climbers
This climb, called Lourdes, was just a few years back one of the hardest climbs in the world with only a handful of successful ascents. Now it's climbed fairly regularly.