Andalusia diagonally…

Week 2

The weather forced us to modify our route a little. As a result, we left the heights of the Sierra de Cazorla to reach the coast, near the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, before returning inland, to the desert…

There are things one cannot fight, and the weather is one of them. A storm front passed over Andalusia, with a drastic drop in temperatures (down to 5ºC maximum) and heavy rain. Those who have experienced a “flash flood” will understand that, with such a prevision, it was perhaps not the best idea to go visit a desert… So, we moved to the coast, very close to the Gabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, since the forecasts seemed a little better by the sea…

But before arriving there, our hopes of seeing one or two Iberian ibexes were more than fulfilled! Marvin was literally surrounded by ibexes the two mornings we spent in Cazorla, and our walks around also allowed us to observe a few more groups (mainly females and youngsters). An exceptional moment in a spectacular landscape (note: we take our photos with iPhones, which explains why the quality of the images is a little reduced with the zoom at maximum…)

For those who would be wondering, yes, the Iberian ibex is a close relative of the one that was found, until the 1990s, in the Pyrenees… The “bucardo” (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) was also , a “cabra montesa”… The species was declared Critically Endangered by IUCN in 1997, the last male died in 1999, and on 6 January 2000, the last female (Célia) was found dead in Spain. It is preserved at the Torla-Ordesa interpretation center so that future generations do not forget this species, decimated by excessive hunting…

To avoid spending three days in a storm at 1,600m altitude (even if surrounded by ibexes…), we decided to go back down and get closer to the coast of Almeria, first making a stop at Velez Blanco, where we took the opportunity to do a little cultural tourism: visit of the castle, Palm Sunday procession and… local specialty restaurant! 😁

And after this bucolic Sunday, all we had to do was push a little further south to reach the sea!… In the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, more precisely, at the foot of the Mesa de Roldán (Roland’s Table, the same one who made a breach in the Pyrenees with his sword Durandale…). An impressive place, a stone’s throw from Playa de los Muertos, where a few small coves slip between cliffs more than 50m above the sea. For the record, Playa de los Muertos owes its name to the fact that, in the past, after a shipwreck, the bodies of drowned sailors generally resurfaced here, due to the currents… Today, the beach is better known for the two enormous blocks of basalt which came to rest there, after having broken away from the cliff just above… It’s a shame that Holcim had the good idea to install a huge cement quarry, with direct access to the sea, just at the other end of the beach… 😒 And as if we hadn’t seen enough in Cazorla, it was there, on the edge of the Mediterranean, that we came across another group of ibexes, just a few steps from Marvin!…

Having to choose between the wind or the rain, and after a windy night on our sea promontory, we thought that, all things considered, it was just as good to go to the desert… Direction Gorafe, then, where after checking with Madam Mayor if it hadn’t rained too much the previous days, we crossed the Badlands of Negratín (in English, even for the locals) to go and settle in facing the Coloraos (in Andalusian, even for tourists 🤣). Two days in an immense and wild setting, between canyons and pinnacles worthy of the American west and colors changing with the clouds. A place simply… WOW! Difficult to make a choice from the dozens of photos we took, just from Marvin’s window!… We spent two days there, but we would have stayed longer if we hadn’t had to refill water and above all, move a little further south…

It was also in the Gorafe desert that we had our first “rescue” experience… A Swiss van which found itself across a very steep track and with a precipice of around fifty meters just behind… We mainly provided moral support (given our technical knowledge… 🤓), but we had the opportunity to learn from Dessa and Michel, a German couple who knows much more than us and, thanks to their van being located on the right side (unlike Marvin), were able to put the Swiss van back on a slightly less precarious trajectory so that it could go back down in reverse and head back the way it came.

All good things coming to an end, we finally returned to civilisation with a short visit to Guadix, its cathedral, its Constitution Square and… its troglodyte district, the largest in Europe with 3,000 people living there, underground, permanently… A curious architecture visibly widespread in the region since the few villages that we crossed on our route all also had houses dug in the clay, of which only the main facade and one or two chimneys came out…

Most people go to Granada to see the Alhambra… Not us. First, because we have seen it already, and secondly, because after a last stop in the Sierra de Huétor Natural Park before arriving in Malaga, or more precisely at Torre del Mar, for a little family weekend, it seemed much more important to us to take a detour to Santa Fé to taste the world famous “Piononos”, a small cake invented by a village pastry chef in honour of the Pope at that time (Pius IX) , and that King Alfonso XIII did not fail to declare official pastry of the Court of Spain. It’s not bad… and it goes very well with a little coffee at 11am… 😜

Ok… a short break over the weekend before hitting the road again to Tarifa on Monday…

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In ANDALUSIA, as anywhere else, LEAVE NO TRACE!

– Always travel on public ways and respect the signs.
– Limit noise and interfere as little as possible with wildlife.
– Respect the other users.
– Leave rocks, plants and other natural features as you found them and respect historic sites.
– Take your waste with you and throw it into the appropriate containers, in the nearest village.
– Do not camp inside protected areas and do not make any fires.