Lost in the Mountains

Late night blog post. I'm currently debating on whether I should even go to bed tonight, since I have to get up at 5 AM tomorrow (the 2nd of May) to catch a bus to Portugal. Decisions, decisions. In the meantime, enjoy my misfortunes in the mountains of Granada today!

I've been living in Granada, Spain for nearly four months now (wow, time flies!), yet not once have I managed to get to the Sierra Nevada mountains that are but a few miles away (I know they use kilometers here, but miles are clearly superior, right?!). Well, after a night out we decided to shotgun a trip to Los Cahorros, a series of trails up near the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. First. we had to catch a bus to the base town of Monachil, except we caught a bus that decided it didn't want to go the whole way, so it dropped us off a good mile away and we had to walk. No biggie, right? We're young, strapping, handsome (I'd even argue gorgeous) Americans on a Spanish adventure; walking is no biggie. Well, it was only the beginning.

We made it! Well, erm, to the almost-beginning.

The town was completely shut down due to the Spanish Día del Trabajador (Labor Day). (I actually find it kinda ironic they have a labor day, since it seems like they have a holiday/party every week anyway, but hey, when in Spain...). Following some dirt roads up, and up, and up.........and up..........and up, until we reached the entrance of the national park.
Yay. We've already seemingly hiked miles, and our adventure has just begun.

Here we go!

If you've ever been to Zion National Park in Utah, that's the closest place I can relate it to that I know of. They're both beautiful. To start, we had to cross a pretty long swaying bridge (after waiting in line for about half an hour, of course, because who said nature doesn't have lines?), only 4 at a time are allowed to cross.

See ya on the other side!

Once on the other side, we were mesmerized by some waterfalls and rock climbers - there were a lot of the latter - as we hiked, crawled, and hanged (yes, literally) our way across the path. The hiking "trail" is a human-placed cement block that hugs some of the rocks, meaning at certain points we had to hang on to the provided hooks, get on our knees and crawl, or my personal favorite, jump into the parallel river and just avoid it all! The water was a bit nippy, but it felt good on such a hot day.
Then we emerged onto the other side. Incredible.

On the other side, we spent more time walking in between the beautiful mountains, streams, and even waterfalls. Eventually, we reached a big gathering point for groups by the stream. Dozens of people were lounging around, eating lunch, and generally just relaxing. It was a great atmosphere. After finishing our makeshift lunches and recharging a bit, we decided to keep going and find the other way out. Consulting some locals, we headed out.
Moving on over nature and at one time literally through a waterfall, the trail started to disappear. It was still evidently a man-made trail, but we found ourselves at quite literally a dead end (still beautiful, but it didn't get us out of the park).

Just follow me into my cave; I swear it's okay...

I suddenly found my climbing skills...

Like I said, quite literally through this waterfall.
Credit Brianne Burie

Frustrated, tired, and running out of water, we finally decided to turn around, something I like to avoid because I want to keep exploring. Backtracking a good half hour, we found more people and asked them how to get out of this beautiful, yet entrapping Eden. The man we asked directed us back in the direction we came from, a good hour's walk, assuming we didn't stop.
We stopped. A lot.
Murphy's Law states that "if something can go wrong, it will.". Well, I'd like to amend it to "if there are two paths to choose from, you're going to choose the wrong one first 100% of the time". Again, it was beautiful and I'm glad we could see these new angles, but we were all starting to tucker out now, and we still had to walk back to town once we left the park. Uf-dah.
Finally, after dragging some of the slower folk with us, we made it. We had escaped the national park. Walking back to town, we caught the bus back to town and quite literally passed out on the half hour ride back. All I remember of this part is that it was uncomfortably hot...darn that mass transit! Hungry, tired, sore, and very much desiring to just sit and reflect, we all headed home to shower up and rest.

Thus, here I am, finishing this. En fin, the hike was awesome and possibly one of the best uses of my day! (cheap, as well!) Now, we're heading off to Lagos, Portugal for a weekend retreat with a bunch of other students. Now that will be an interesting blog post.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment!

Jacob

PS. Yes, Semana Santa will happen...