Andalucía, Spain

Vicki and I took some time off from stressful grad school and did some hiking in the province of Andalucía in lovely Spain in March of 2006. The location was a fairly arbitrary choice, but we were attracted to it for many reasons:

It is very far away from New York City,
The temperatures in mid-March are around 15-20° C (60-70° F), which is plenty warm for us Canadians in the winter,
The tourists don't show up until at least May,
It has mountains, beaches, and the Mediterranean Sea, and
The hike is around the “Cabo de Gata”, or, “Cape of Cats”.

Vicki had a previously borrowed a Lonely Planet guidebook called “Walking in Spain” from the New York Public Library, and we decided on a three-day hike along the southern coast of Spain. The hike started in the small town of Cabo de Gata, continued through San José and Las Negras to finish in Agua Amarga.

Getting there

The hardest part of travelling is always the flying around and wasting your life away in airports. We flew out of JFK international airport with Iberia, the largest Spanish airline. The flight was scheduled to fly from New York to Madrid and then on to Málaga in about twelve hours of total travel time.

Frankly speaking, Iberia sucks. The incoming plane arrived in New York two hours late because it was late getting out of Madrid. Fine. However, Iberia didn't bother to tell anyone until an hour after our flight was supposed to leave! Iberia didn't bother to put an agent at the gate and the information on the departure boards wasn't updated. In contrast, at the gate next to ours British Airways had a similarly-delayed flight, but they were pleasantly updating their customers on the flight status every ten minutes or so. Really, it should have been a British Airways television commercial!

In the end, we missed our connection and the flying went from the original twelve hours to about sixteen, not counting travel to and from the airports and extra time for the ineffectual security checks. We hung out for quite a while in the Madrid airport, which is actually pretty decent, and then finally got a flight to Málaga. Luckily, Málaga is a pretty easy city to navigate, because we were completely loopy by the time we got there.

Málaga

Málaga is a great city with an active old quarter in the center and near the water. We assumed that the old quarter would be completely built for tourists, but we were quite happy to discover that it seemed to be full of real people, especially on the weekends and in the evenings. The old quarter has many pedestrian streets, plazas, cafés, bars, restaurants, clothing stores, hostals, churches and a famous cathedral or two. It's really pretty nice to hang around in. It's also the birthplace of Picasso, and there is a great Picasso museum filled with pieces that the artist sent back to his home town. The museum itself is quite new and located in a set of beautiful restored buildings.

Please note that the images on the right will take you to all the photographs for a particular section.

Alcazaba de Málaga

Next to the old quarter of the city is the Alcazaba of Malaga (“fortress,” I think). The Alcazaba is a fortress/palace built in the 11th century by the Muslim rulers of the area. It sits on the hill above Málaga, surrounded by high stone ramparts and connected by a curtain wall to the castle of Gibralfaro further up the hill. The Muslims ruled the area for centuries and brought it out of feudalism, check out this overview for more information.

The Alcazaba is a warren of staircases, passageways and small courtyards, often containing gardens and plants. The most striking thing about it is the limestone walls and characteristic arches. I found the Mediterranean light in the Alcazaba enchanting. It is difficult to describe: it clear and warm, bringing the reds and yellows of the brick and stone out and giving everything a golden glow. It's not hard to imagine Picasso painting in this light.

Castillo de Gibralfaro

The Castillo de Gibralfaro is connected to the Alcazaba by a curtain wall. It was originally built in the 8th century and then rebuilt in the 14th century. It acted as a lighthouse and a fortress, though now not much remains apart from its walls and a few courtyards inside. The Castillo is on top of the hill overlooking Málaga and walking the ramparts provides some pretty amazing views of the city and the port. I visited this by myself on our last day of the trip, because, unbeknownst to me, Vicki had food poisoning. I just thought she was hung over. Silly me!

Granada and the Alhambra

Located in the city of Granada, the Alhambra is an 11th-century Muslim palace and is justifiably famous. After the relatively tourist-light city of Málaga, Granada seemed tourist-crazy. The large plaza closest to the Alhambra was packed with people and we were approached immediately by locals advertising accomodations to tourists in English, French and Spanish.

Hike Day 1: Cabo de Gata to San José

To be continued...