Cabo De Gata

Well, welcome to my travel blog, and to Spain! I am so incredibly excited to be here, the whole trip has been amazing so far, and every day is a challenge and a delight in its own way.

Yesterday, we did our first day trip to Cabo de Gata, and WOW. We had a 16 km (10 miles..) hike across the park to the town of San Jose where we'd have dinner. What a day. We chose our groups based on speed, and I was in the perros, or middle. The whole area was formed by volcanoes, so there's a huge variation in types of rocks. And, thankfully we were blessed with a relatively cloudy day, especially in an area that gets like 3 inches of rain in an entire year!

But we started off climbing across black, rough rocks along the water's edge. It was mostly that and sand when we were along the coast, which was fun!

 Feelin' good (:

 Here you can see some of the variance in the types and colors of rock!

 What we perhaps weren't expecting so much was having to climb literal mountains. Yeah, see that curving road there in the foreground? I hiked that. And, it was killer. But we made it! And it was all downhill on the other side.

 And the breeze (read: strong wind) and the view from the top alone made it worth the climb. 

Then, finally, we stopped for lunch and a swim at La Playa Del Monsul, which was used in the film Laurence of Arabia! This area in general is used for a lot of films, including some of the Indiana Jones movies, and any houses in the park are from the 50s and 60s, before the area was a park, and people working on the films bought and built the houses.

 Next we took the cliff route, which could very likely have been originally walked by a mountain goat, if any lived here. See that edge to the right of my girls Shelby and Carlyle? Pretty much a straight drop down a couple hundred feet to the water. Tread lightly, lol.

 Another stop on a beach for a quick swim. Amazing scenery.

And finally, finally, we crested the last big hill, and our dinner in San Jose was in sight. But la playa de San Jose is a pretty long beach, especially for tired legs and feet, and after dining with a view of the beach, I was excited at the prospect of a nap during the 2 hour bus journey back home to Granada.

And finally, treat of all treats, just before we boarded the bus, it started to rain! On the taxi ride home through the city, our driver told us that it was the first rain of the year. Making my prediction about the rain in Spain falling mainly on Jane totally accurate. Who knew I could predict the future? Maybe I'll join the gypsies and move into a cave in the hills soon. Only time will tell ;)

Hasta luego, amigos!