Month: August 2012

A wee stroll in the Sierra Nevada

Day 214, Sunday 05 August 2012 – Capileira

It was a noisy night in Capileira, with the partying not stopping on the street until 6:00 am, naturally i choose to stay in my room all night and watched Thor on my laptop, and I wonder why I don’t meet people. Though the main tourists here appear to be Spanish – and I will say, not particularly young either.

I woke with incredibly sore eyes, I haven’t suffered from this for months and forgot how painful opening them can be, I am wandering if it was due to the air con on the bus yesterday and the lack of water I consumed – I won’t blame the whisky as my head was fine! Hopefully they will be better tomorrow, but they are feeling very dry now.

At 7:30 I got up to take a photo of the sun rising on the hills and I really wanted to get going on my walk.

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However, the hotel restaurant was yet to open and I was not going to go walking without breakfast inside me as I had no other food source. I managed to get some food about 8:45, bread and jam – but the all important coffee was had.

I finally left about 9:30, I wasn’t really in a rush, the loop I was doing was supposed to take three hours thirty, but I wanted to get some of the walk in before the sun was shining on the side of the Poqueira River valley I was walking. It was quite warm with a strong wind gusting around as well.

The start was quite steep, there is about 400 metres climb in the 7.1km walk and the first 100 was getting out of the village, from there it flattened out for the next 3 or so kilometres to the abandoned village of La Cebadilla. I had a feeling I was being watched…

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There were very few people on the walk, I saw families at the start and end and a runner came towards me at the midpoint – I was a bit jealous of him and may well run the loop tomorrow morning.

The aqueduct bringing the fresh water into the town makes an appearance every now and then along the side of the path. For most first half of the walk the path was 4WD track opening up to road for a kilometre or so, the second half was pretty much all single track. P1150097

I took an artsy type shot of the track, I love the grasses here, and yes the out of focus was deliberate!

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The few houses and church at La Cebadilla were built for the workers who built the hydroelectric power station that opened in 1956, the settlement was abandoned soon after.

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It only took an hour to get to the half way point which was a bit of a worry as I wanted to fill a bit more of the day than just two hours. I decided to walk a further six km to the refuge on the mountain.

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However further up the road I saw a map of the walks and there was almost 1100 metres of climbing to the Refugio and as I had no food and only a litre of water I decided to flag it. I walked up to the top of the first, steep climb and took a photo.

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The track crossed the Rio Poqueira here and continued back to Puente Abuchite, a bridge below Capiliera. The walk was interesting, lots of abandoned house and farm buildings on the way.

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At the bridge.

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There was a further kilometre of up hill from the bridge back to town, I just knocked it off at a fast pace. I had completed the walk, including my small detour plus taking photos in two and half hours, now what !

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As it was only barely twelve I went for a lie down before heading out for a big lunch – and bought some muesli bars for next time…

The problem with these sorts of towns is there is basically nothing to do once the walk is done, I could drink all afternoon but there is little point in that, leave me nothing to do in the evenings then! The internet pretty much doesn’t work in my room so I could not get a lot of work on the next phase of my plan done so I read a bit until I got bored around 6:00. I decided to walk down to Bubion – the village below as I had seen a path yesterday and it is only a kilometre away by road. I walked back down to the bottom of the village, there are lots of dogs around and dog pooh is everywhere, really need to keep your eyes peeled when walking ! i found the track and started walking down, I must have gone a hundred vertical metres before the trail just sort of stopped, so I ended up turning round and walking back up again, it was a warm walk, much hotter than this morning.

I went back to my room and read some more before heading down to the bar for a beer and a blog posting.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBfybCPkjA

 

 

 

Capileira

Day 213, Saturday 04 August 2012 – Capileira

I did not rush out of bed this morning, my day has me checking out at some time after ten and then catching a bus to the bus station for my next stop, Capileira. Once up I finally found what I have been looking for for days – breakfast. I had some great bacon and eggs and a pretty good coffee, all for 6 euros as well. Shame it had to be last day !

With the great breakfast under (soon to be hanging over ) my belt fortune was obviously smiling on me as the local bus arrived as soon as I got to the bus stop near the hotel. The bus took a very round about route to the bus station, but I was so early I did not mind. Even though it is after 10 am on a Saturday morning so much of Granada appears to be closed. I was again lucky at the bus station as I easily managed to work out how to use the ticket machine and it is a cheap ride to Capileira, 2.5 hours and 5.59 Euros ! Awesome.

Capiliera is a small village in the Sierra Nevadas, it is a tourist town with summer walking and winter ski-ing. The village is ancient, and has seen people living here for many centuries, Goths (not my sort obviously – too hot for all that black) , then Moors until 1528 when the Catholic Spanish took over. I am going there to do a bit of walking and see some of Andalucia’s famous white villages.

Once off the highway the road up to the villages is narrow and twisty and goes up and up, Capiliera itself is at 1500 metres. The bus stopped at numerous small towns – all unrelentingly gorgeous and I could not wait to get to my destination for a look see.

The town of Pampeneira, just down the hill from Capileira.

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The bus delivered me at 2:30 and I found my wee hotel by a stroke of good fortune – I saw a van with its name parked outside:) Unlike the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia that are significantly cooler than the coast, the Sierra Nevada’s are hotter than the coast, I had read it but wow, quite a difference, even from Granada – I was glad I found my room quickly – not that there is air con or a fan, but there is a window and a good bar downstairs and it was cooler than the street.

For lunch I finally, finally, managed to get Paella ! I have been wanting one since arriving in Spain, but always seem to be at the wrong time, or the wrong day, or as I found last night in Granada – one person short of the two minimum. It was great, the calamari was delicious and ate all the mussels and everything else – very unusual as I am not a big seafood eater. I ate lunch sitting on a street side table jealously watching as loads of mountain bikers went past after coming off the mountain, I was hoping to get a bike tour but there is nothing in this town, I perhaps should have gone to one of the bigger centres. But still great to see such a fantastic sport is well patronised here.

After lunch and a wee lie down, I went for a walk around the village and snapped a few photos – and as I said above, just unrelentingly gorgeous !

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The flat roof houses are known as Terroos and are one of three distinct types of house style.

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Naturally the museum was closed…

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as was the church.

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Capileira is blessed with a fresh water spring that flows through the town – possibly why it is here ? but there are water fountains all over – the water from this was surprisingly cold.

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As the sun was dropping behind the opposing ridge I went for a wee look above the town, up the trail I would be walking in the morning.

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According to Spanish TV, there is only one country competing in the Olympics ! Though it appears i am missing some of the events I wanted to see…

I have to get used to the Spanish not using i before e, it is hard to change a life times spelling !

Shine on me

Day 212, Friday 03 August 2012 – Granada

It was another slow start to the day, I didn’t have a huge amount planned anyway, a wander around the Albaicin was pretty much it, plus a big breakfast 🙂

I was out the door for 8:45 and was surprised to find the streets of Granada quite deserted.

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I was equally surprised to find most of the cafes and restaurants closed as well so finding a place even for a basic breakfast took a few minutes – I had to flag having a big one ! I have noticed that a lot of the shops and food places around the streets near my hotel – in the middle of the tourist zone, are closed. This is not a good sign for the economy of Granada, or Andalucia either.

Le Albaicin sits on the opposite side of the valley over the Darro river from La Alhambra and was where the bulk of the population lived, it is full of old Moorish buildings and steep narrow streets.

I am using a (not Lonely Planet either) guide book and disappointingly the directions to things to visit use street names that are not on the included map – this is simple guys, I mean come on !!! So, I was not where I expected to be almost as soon as I left the main drag, not that the area is that huge, so I just headed up hill until I made it to St Nicholas, built in 1525 it is one of the many many churches in the area. A lot of the churches were founded on the site of mosques, with materials from the mosque used in the construction. The view from the top of the bell tower over the city, LaAlhambra and the Dorra valley was fabbo.

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I stopped for a coffee at a cafe behind the church, the coffee was great, but again the service was craptastic. They really do treat tourists with some disdain here which is deeply frustrating given the state of the Spanish economy, especially here in the south. I wanted to buy something to eat as well but if they don’t want my money then I won’t part with it – or maybe it is just me ?

I spent the rest of the morning wandering around the streets, occasionally working out where I was and occasionally running into things I wanted to see. Surprisingly (or not) virtually everything was closed, bizarre – there were tons of tourists around but we couldn’t get into anything, oh well – wandering is what I like anyway. I did love the decorated houses.

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The old part of the city was once surrounded by a high wall with gated entry points, a number still remain, randomly appearing in the streets.

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The old wall here is supposed to open to the public at some stage, but obviously not yet as it is walled off and virtually unviewable, which was a shame. There are a lot of high walls here, so naturally everything is graffitied, sadly not a lot of street art, just spray bombing. I did find this one stencil, which I also saw in Barcelona which was kinda cool.

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San Cristobel

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The is a huge difference between renovated and un-renovated here. The old quarter is slowly being taken over by professionals and the old houses, some in terrible state of repair are being done up.

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I wanted to get up to the hills above the quarter and try to get to the old stone wall, it took a while of randomly walking around the some steep, but always zig sagging streets until I found a narrow path that led up the hill, there was a great view over the wall to Alhambra.

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This section of the hill overlooks the Sacromonte, where most of the houses were caves in the hillside. This area was heavily populated by gypsies, many of which have moved on as parts of the Sacromonte have become gentrified, however in the hillside there are still a number of cave dwellings. (Apologies, the sun was so bright and glary, photography was quite tough !)

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did you see the doll ? weird…

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Further down the hill where there are streets and services the caves have been turned into small homes. A bit like Hobbitton 🙂

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I wandered back down the side of the Rio Darro and stopped for a Spanish omelette and beer for lunch at one of the open cafes, not bad and it was great to be able sit down in the shade for a bit. The sun is quite hot, but with low humidity I am not actually bothered by it too much – thanks goodness.

The walk down the Darro Valley is nice, there a lot of old churches – all closed,

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But the 11th century Muslim bathhouse Banos Arabes was open for viewing.

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I finally reached Plaza Nueva and the church of Santa Ana y San Gil (closed of course) and the end of my planned day.

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It was close to 3:00 so timed perfectly for an afternoon nap. Not that I had one, but I did watch Johnny Mnemonic, the old Keanu Reaves movie on my laptop which was almost as good as being as being asleep.

After the movie I went off in search of something to eat for dinner, ended up with the usual and unimaginative pizza , I wanted paella but the place I chose only did it for two people. Sometimes solo is just a pain in the butt ! The pizza was good, but I did not linger.

La Alhambra

Day 211, Thursday 02 August 2012, Granada

Discovered last night that the internet, while free – is slow as a wet week – not that I have had a wet week since I left England! But trying to upload blog posts and photos was hopelessly slow – I had gotten to used to the fast access at Ian’s place.

The hostel room is not too bad, bed is comfy, shower is awesome, but let down with paper thin walls – the party people who arrived at 4:30 am were very audible and I didn’t really get back to sleep after that, though I didn’t actually get out of bed until 8:45 – ahhhhhh, luxury.

My plan for the day was to get a La Alhambra ticket for tomorrow as getting one on the day is supposed to hard in peak season and then cruise Granada’s barrio streets and see the non-Alhambra highlights. I meandered off in the direction of Alhambra to get coffee and breakfast on the way, I picked a cafe at random, had a good coffee – an average pastry and the shittest service yet in Europe, I waited a good ten minutes standing at the bar waiting to pay – it’s not as if the place was crowded either, I was so so tempted to walk. Not going back there tomorrow !

The walk up the Sabika hill was not as bad as I expected, the guide book suggests taken a bus, but that would have been stupid. It was a shady and cool walk thankfully but the wait in the queue for tickets was exposed to the sun and was quite hot (come on Spain, even the Vietnamese had shade provided for long queues). The queue was frankly – ridiculous, These guys must have read the “how to make queue fucking awful” guide, I have no idea why they had to make buying a ticket so damn hard, this made queuing in Paris seem easy. As there were options for entering the site today I decided to enter now rather getting a ticket and coming back tomorrow. Of course I then had to queue to get in…

La Alhambra (red fort)- one of the most visited tourist places in Europe, was original an Islamic Moorish castle/palace from the 12th century until it was conquered by the Catholic Spanish in 1492. The majority of the site was built under the Moors but some additions were made by the Spanish.

I kinda liked it, it was hot- but not humid, so completely bearable after some of the places in SE Asia – in fact I am pretty used to hot now, scarily so…. It was too crowded for my liking, but given it is school holidays it is to be expected. I just hoping I am not over visiting historic sites, I was not overly impressed to be perfectly honest. I mean, I enjoyed it, but I was not – WOW !

But I did take a lot of photos, mainly of the various views over the city and of some of the large scenes, there was not a lot of interesting detail to document, or maybe I was just in the wrong places!

First I visited the Generalife, which were one of the garden areas of the palace, with some great views of the main site.

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I then took a wander around the main site and I love white birches, they are just fantastic trees.

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Before entering some of the key areas, such as the Alcazaba, with its glorious views over Granada.

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And the Palacio de Carlos V. This building is pretty cool, yet controversial as it is a fairly chunky piece of real estate built in the 1500’s under the reign of Charles 5th, compared to the more delicate and petite Moorish sections of Alhambra it is a bit of a monster. What I liked, apart from the cool eagle and lion rings on the square outside, was that the interior is circular and quite coliseum like.

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From the palace I joined another queue in the sun for my 12:30 entry to the Palacios Nazaries, the Moorish highlight of Alhambra. OK, maybe it was too crowded or too hot or I didn’t read the guide book well enough to see the detail, but I was non-plussed by the whole thing – sorry folks ! (Angkor really kicks its arse). Even my camera was not excited, some crap photos were taken – I am of course blaming the technology, if I had my good camera, they would be stunning!

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I left the site via the Torre de la Justice

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And past the statue of Washington Irving, the American author of “Sleepy hollow” and “Rip van winkle” who lived here for a time in the 1800’s. The hotel named after him has not fared so well!

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I took a leisurely stroll back to my hotel with the aim of joining the locals in the siesta. P1140961

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I stopped for a beer at a small bar near the hotel – ended up having three as each beer came with a tapas – I had pototoe with chilli, blood sausage (yeah I know, but I had to try it) and the best gazpacho yet, yumbo. A wee siesta was had…

After my siesta – and no I did not sleep, I wandered off to check out the Capilla Real, the crypt at the nearby cathedral, the crypt holds the remains of Fernando and Isobell the first Christian rulers of the area, both passed away in 1516. Sadly no photos were allowed – a fact i found out after I paid to go in. It was moderately interesting, but that was some awesome ironwork in there and some fabbo paintings as well – but I cannot show you.

i did like the fountain in the plaza though.

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I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do, it was “only” 7:00 Pm so too early for dinner apparently, my stomach disagreed of course, so I wandered around a bit, settled on a couple of beers and went back to my room with my standby packet of potato chips and finished last nights wine and blogged.

Today, my heart just wasn’t in it, Granada deserves more than I gave it! I took some shouse photos today, so some brutal culling took place and these really were the best of the bunch.

[edit] I cannot believe this posted on the first go ! last night it took numerous attempts and it hardly had any images.  I create my posts and insert images using  program called Blogdesk, heaps quicker than trying to upload images via WordPress’s interface. However, it can create one big upload that can be tricky on a slow internet connection. So yay,  first time upload [/edit]

 

 

 

On the road again

Day 210, Wednesday 01 August 2012, Granada

I had an awesome sleep last night – finally ! I was up at 7:30, fed, packed and had the room cleaned for my 8:30 departure. Ian too me to the bottom of the hill to the small village of Puente Don Manuel where I was going to catch the 9:10 bus to Granada. As we pulled into the bus stop at 8:40 a bus drove past, little did we know that it was THE BUS. I hung round the bus stop, waited well past 9:10 and finally went into a cafe further up the road and found out (after much blank staring on my behalf as they only spoke Spanish) that the bus is at 8:30 and stops outside the cafe – not at the bus stop and not at 9:10 as per the web site. There is only one bus each day, bugger it !

The old church next to the Puente bus stop.

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I decided to try and hitch a ride to Granada but after an hour of standing roadside in the ever increasing heat I flagged it and rang Ian to get a ride with him into the larger town of Torre Del Mar as he was heading in at 11:30.

At Torre Del Mar I found the next bus was at 4:30, I checked whether it was worth my while to head even further in the opposite direction towards the big city of Malaga and catch one of the more frequent busses from there. I probably could have saved an hour but it would have almost tripled the cost – not that transport is that expensive, so I decided to chill in Torre for half a day as it is a beach town and I am not really in any rush. The beach at Torre is a busy place…

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I found myself a good shade tree on a patch of grass near the crowded beach and lay there for over an hour reading my “book” before finding a pizzeria for pizza and beer – my favourite indulgence : ) At lunch I found I had lost my notebook, possibly in the bus office. I was due to buy a new one, as it was close to full, but all my scribbled notes from coast path run, and things since were now gone – I was pissed off with myself and saddened for it as well. I enjoyed the break in Torre, I am so much more chilled than I used to be in NZ, I managed to actually relax for four hours, without worrying about buses, hotels, where I am going or what I am doing. I even got a way towards laying down a plan for the next few months, given some of the other things on my mind at the moment, this was remarkable !

The pizza was great though…

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I made my way back for the bus and was pleasantly surprised to find it arrived and left on time, what was a shame was it took three hours to get to Granada, we went the long way ! The bus went up the coast, almost all the way to Almeria, the ride was pretty interesting. We were between sea and mountains and the area is incredibly arid, though still beautiful. The hills go straight down to the sea in many areas so the road is full of tunnels and long viaducts, some lovely engineering work has been done here. This area of the coast – like most of the Spanish Med. Coast has been spectacularly marred by ugly developments but there are still some lovely little areas with small white villas amid the olive groves. There is also a big contrast between poverty and wealth in the state of some of the properties – and I can see some of the remaining, older and more traditional sections also being swallowed up by the ugliness of tourism for the better off.

I was anticipating it being a bit cooler in the mountains, but that was obviously a ridiculous thought, it was 31 degrees on the coast at Torre del mar and 38 when the bus arrived in Grenada at 7:30pm! I was going to walk the four or so k to the hotel, but decided to get a cab instead. A very wise choice as I did not see one single street sign on the main roads, I would have got hopelessly lost. The Hostel Atenas is a quality two star hotel right on the edge of the old quarter, as I arrived so late in the day I extended my stay to three nights instead of two, as there is a bit to see here and I don’t want to miss bits because I have to rush – anyway it is too hot to rush anywhere !

After checking in I went in search of a glass of wine and a light snack, I wandered past the cathedral – to be explored tomorrow.

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And found a cafe to sit outside of for a while and enjoy some stunningly tender calamari and a glass or two of rioja. I ended up feeling uncomfortable sitting in this place surrounded by couples and young families, so ended up leaving earlier than planned and picking up a bottle to drink in my room – I know drinking alone (again) not healthy ! I did watch this guy for a bit.

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Looking forward to exploring Grenada tomorrow.

The long and winding road

Day 209, Tuesday 31 July 2012, Alcaucin

Up early again and back out on the road for another run up the hill. I was a bit stiff today and it was a slower start than yesterday. By mid way up the hill I had quite a sore back, not uncommon when I haven’t run hills for a while – but the rest of me was pain free which was great. I almost made it to the top car park where I ran to yesterday without stopping at all, but there was one bend too many and I just had to stop and stretch out my back – only a hundred or so metres to go too f*ck it! I was expecting to be slow today and I certainly felt lead legged but I got to the car park slightly quicker than yesterday so I must have been going OK, though I didn’t stop to take photos today.

I decided to push on for one more kilometre, up to the viewpoint over the valley. I found this kilometre quite hard going in the end, though it was the least uphill of the whole run. It was warmer this morning than yesterday and well – I had run yesterday !

I took a wee rest at the look out and snapped a couple of photos before running back down again. Theres more hill !!!

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I have never posted two photos of myself, but for a change I actually took a couple of photos of me that I like !

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The run down was good, got a wee stitch from all the pounding on the road, but apart from that I felt Ok. Yay !

After a feed and a swim I spent the rest of the day mooching, nice to relax again!

It was a hot hot day so late afternoon Ian and Rosie took a dip while Muttley voiced his disapproval, Muttley hates people in the pool for some unknown reason.

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I did a cleanup of my space as the room I have been using will be occupied for a some of the days that I am away. And I had that shave as well…

Dinner was a great dorado fish and hand made chips along with a couple of glasses of red wine that I managed to pick up from the local shop all by myself !

The long and winding road – but at least it is heading down the hill

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You didn’t really think I would post a Beatles song did you ?