Day 8: More White Hill Towns (June 19)

After enjoying breakfast with our new American friends in our hotel, we thought it would be fun to go on a longer hike into the Parque National from our farm.  We chose the shortest one they had listed – 8 km, 2 hours, tops of four mountains – so that we would have plenty of time to visit other towns along the White Hill Town drive during the day.  This time our hike would be without any marked sign posts.  They suggest an app that guides you with gps coordinates and seems great, but as the wifi was not working in the hotel and downloading it over data would have used all my allotted data for the month, we decided to take their written-entirely-in-Spanish instructions as our only guide.  There were about 12 instructions for the entire 8 kms, with no indication of distance between each one (except for coordinates).  For those of you thinking (based on experiences from the past few days and general common sense) that this couldn’t possibly end well, that is exactly how I felt as we set out.

We headed to the start of the trail near the river, through the pasture where the farm’s horses were having breakfast served by the resident French part horse caretaker, part kitchen helper (who added to our sensation of being trapped in an Agatha Christie novel).  So far, so good.  We set out to the right as instructed along the river, but that is when it got a little less clear.  We were looking for a particular cork tree in a land of cork trees.  We walked through beautiful fields of knee-high flowers and (very scratchy) grasses in search of trails.  We eventually got to a gate (that appeared to say not to enter) that let us know we were on the right path.  These are not gates that look like they are ever to be opened - made entirely of barbed wire fence and very hard to put back into place properly once you have unwound the fence to get through.  We left all gates slightly less closed than we found them but hopefully closed enough to keep the animals on whichever side they are supposed to be.  We found the Roman ruins and fallen trees indicating still on the right path. 

The scary cow bulls

Now remember that we are supposed to ascend four mountains and be back in two hours.  It was about 90 minutes in of mostly flat walking when we got to a road where we were supposed to exit one gate, cross the road, and enter one across the street.  When we got across the street, the next gate was being guarded by  what looked like a herd of bulls.  We sat and watched them for a while trying to determine their level of threat (on alert after our visit to the bullring) and noticed one walking by was clearly a she bull.  Cows with horns.  We decided we could probably make it through them though the longer we waited the more interested they became, moving into our path.  We did brave the cows and started our first ascent.  About 100 yards later, nearing a little farmhouse with goats and sheep, still congratulating ourselves for not turning back, a pack of angry dogs charged at us barking wildly.  Two or three straight at us on the trail, one coming down the hill, one coming up the hill.  Rachel calmly talked to them as we backed away - our hike officially over.  We turned and found our path now entirely blocked by the interested cow bulls who had wandered over to check out the commotion.  They were still the safer bet to walk through and leave the property than to face the dogs and continue on up the hill. 

Our hotel - the balcony is our room

We knew the road we had just crossed would take us back the long way to our hotel,  so the next farm house we came to on the right we saw the owner outside and asked permission to cut through his property back down to the river.  He too had several dogs who all looked rabid but were chained up and who he assured us "no hacen nada".  As he watched us walk away, I made sure Rachel knew that if she had been alone it would have been much wiser to walk the extra 4 km than to speak to this man and enter his property - it all felt a little creepy.

We made it back without further incident, collected our bags, and went to check out.  Without wifi, we weren’t able to pay by card and didn’t have enough cash so we followed the owner of the hotel to the bank in Grazelema to get enough money to pay for our wonderful stay – highly recommend Tambor del Llano.

Our next stop in the white hill town drive was Zahara de la Sierra, notable for the Moorish castle at the top of it and its views of the turquoise reservoir below (made in the 1990s).  It was a very steep walk to the top but really cool castle with a super wind tunnel on the top floor.

On to Ronda – the place I had most wanted to see on this trip -- which features an old town and new town separated by a beautiful bridge.  We had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the bridge then walked down a ways to get a good view.  We decided the view from where we were standing was good enough and getting closer was not worth the risk of real death – you are welcome, Julia!

Then, the bullring.  I wasn't sure we'd see one bullring on this trip, much less two. But even though we had already toured Seville’s, we learned that Ronda is really the home of the modern bullfight and the place that inspired Hemingway, et al.  So, we toured this one too.  It included a pretty good museum with lots of history of the art (don’t call it a sport!).  It was there that we realized that whatever we had trudged through earlier this morning did not sit well with our legs. 

We circled back to a bakery we had wandered into before lunch to buy a treat for the road, but the cream puffs we had been eyeing were sold out – I guess we weren’t the only ones who thought those looked amazing!  We got a very unsatisfying soft serve cone instead and ended up throwing half of it away to save our treats for something more deserving.

Malaga, our final stop in Spain, was another 1.5 hours away.  We got checked into our hostel overlooking the Alcazaba.  It is quite a hip place with a rooftop bar and restaurant, but we opted instead to walk the town in search of a vegetarian restaurant Rachel found online.  Malaga has a very different vibe – even though we haven’t seen the water yet, it is clear we are in a beach town - felt like I was on Third Street Promenade.  After a disappointing starter course, the main and dessert were amazing.  As we walked back to our hotel we came across 8-person Mariachi band performing outside a Mexican restaurant outside our hotel.  It wasn't until we got up to our room that I realized that restaurant, band, and all the night’s pedestrian bar traffic was actually directly below our room!

The Mexican restaurant, our balcony above, the Alcazaba in the background