The time had come to turn straight north and pass right over the Sierra Nevada. At Puerto de la Ragua 2000 meters above sea level I had a very good vegetable soup before I started the descent on the northern face of the mountain range.
Sierra Nevada
In the afternoon I was moving through more densely populated areas once more and went through the picturesque village of Ferreira.
Ferrerira
Not long after that I saw the characteristic shape of the fortress of La Calahorra, painted in red.
La Calahorra
I made myself comfortable in a hotel in the village and prepared myself for the big leap to Narváez the next day.
Leaving Sierra Nevada behind made me a little sad. We had had company for a long time and it was constantly visible to me. Early in the morning I found myself on a huge, red, dusty plain where several square kilometers were covered by huge solar panels that made spooky sounds as they moved with the sun.
Sierra Nevada
Today´s stage was to be over 50 kilometers and went mainly through a natural park. It is not as great as it sounds as the major part of the day was spent on dirt roads lined with densely growing pine trees. So it really was a struggle with few rewards in terms of nice views and other interesting things to see, and there wasn’t a single village in my way.
Sierra Nevada
After some 50 kilometers I reached the recreational facility of Narváez. In the high-season accommodation and food is available there but not when I passed by, but there were some people. They had held a course that day and were preparing to leave. They asked if I wanted a ride to Baza and I happily accepted. We were five grown men that packed ourselves into a very small car and I besides that carried a 20 kilo backpack, but we managed to find the space and had a pleasant chat on our way to the city.
Crowded
The guys dropped me off near Baza center and wouldn’t hear of charging me for the ride. I made my way to a hotel by asking the locals and called it a day. The big leap that had worried me for some time was over and done with and I had proven to myself that walking 50 kilometers in one day carrying a (to me) heavy backpack was quite feasible after all.
The 28 of May turned out to be another long day covering three of the stages from the guide-book. The signposting was very fragmented and it really was a must to have a GPS-device in order not to get completely lost.
Valley of death
Between Benamaurel and Cúllar you walk for a long distance through a very strange landscape. The dirt road winds through a valley lined by high sand dunes starred with patches of grass and in between there are corn fields. At first sight it is a wow feeling because that kind of landscape leads the thoughts to the coasts of Ireland or Scotland but after having walked in that landscape for mile after mile constantly with the same picture in front of your eyes you begin to feel a little insane and start talking to yourself.
Cúllar
But at last I got out of there and at the outskirts of Cúllar I found Hostal Monte Carlo. As many times before I was immediately handed my room key without any formalities. Passport registration could always wait until the guest had a chance to freshen up and wind down for a bit.
The innkeepers daughter
Later that evening I had one of the best meals I’ve ever had in Spain so far: charcoal grilled shoulder of mutton with a superb ratatouille. The service was fast and accurate despite the fact that the restaurant was packed with people. It seems to me that some people have a natural talent for doing the job they do. In this place one woman took care of the orders from all the guests in the restaurant and at the same time managed the busy take-away pizza service.
The one interesting thing to see walking in this area was the many cave houses that made the mountain sides look like Swiss cheese in some places.
Cave houses
I think that most of the caves were used to store equipment and to give shelter to animals but in other parts of Andalucía there are regular houses contained inside caves.
Cave house
I stayed at another guest house in Huéscar. It had a super market but no restaurant so I had to go downtown for a bit to find supper.
May 30 began with several miles on a tarmac road lined with high cypress trees. After a while I almost had the same desperate feeling as when walking in the “Valley of death” a couple of days before. It soon becomes too boring for the brain when a pattern repeats itself for miles and you really can’t see anything else.
Cypress avenue
Later on there were some interesting cliff formations to look at like el Salto del moro, the Moors leap, but otherwise not much to see except pine forest. I entered Puebla de Don Fadrique after six hours and 25 kilometers which was far less than I was accustomed to.
Puebla de Don Fadrique
I had a tapa in the first bar I ran into and asked the bar woman if there was a hotel in the village. There was a motel at the northern outskirts of Puebla de Don Fadrique and they had both room and board for me.
Signpost
This was the last stage of my guide-book and from the day after I had to rely completely on my GPS-device but I also was going to buy a map when I found a good one in order to get the big picture of the country that I was passing through.
A rather straight forward march up unto the high plateau covering as good as all of central Spain. The afternoon involved quite a bit of hard work as I didn’t have my GPS-device set up at a good enough resolution and that resulted in some sliding about on slippery hillsides until finding my way back to the track again.
Community limit
A thunderstorm passed by with a couple of heavy showers that completely got me completely soaked. But I reached El Sabinar a village with 300 souls, two restaurants, and a guest house with a bar. It was raw and chilly and I was a bit concerned that my boots probably shouldn’t dry much over night.I went down the stairs to the guest house bar at around seven o’clock and asked if I could have dinner.
Múrcia
The answer was affirmative but I had to ask to times more before the barman understood that I wanted to eat at once at a, for him, extremely early time for dinner. But as soon as he had understood he swiftly presented a very nice casserole that he held warm on the stove with some bread, a salad, and a glass of Rioja.
I made an early start as usual but the bar was open and I had toast and coffee before I left. This day involved another fifty kilometers in rainy weather but the rain really isn’t any trouble, but the clay is. The surface on the forest roads is made up of very fine-grained sand and when it rains it immediately sticks to your boots rapidly building layers of mud that soon is several centimeters thick and impossible to walk on.
Forest trail
You are forced to stop every fifty meters or so and try to scrape the mud off the soles of your boots, and that is just as easy as removing dog-shit from there, very annoying I can tell you!
Dirty boots
I reached Calasparra in a beautiful evening sun and rented an apartment for the night that to my joy was fully equipped with washing machine and all. I really needed to wash my clothes.
Calasparra
In the evening I had a fantastically tasty rabo de toro, bulls tail, that melted in the mouth.
This was another of those rather monotonous days following stone starred dirt roads lined by almond trees that stood in straight lines as far as you could see in all directions. Part of the stage though was walked through areas with low-growing pine forests and eroded cliffs.
Eroded cliff
The terrain is much undulated with lots of ravines to round. The problem is that you seldom pass any villages where you can have something nice to eat and drink.
I walked on with good speed passing through Elda ending up in Castalla for the night. The mountain between Elda and Castalla gave me a hard time walking on slowly climbing forest tracks hour after hour.
Village walk-thru
For the first time I encountered a hotel that was full and I had to continue to a motel a few kilometers further ahead.
