Senderismo

(I took what I wrote on attackpoint and added a few comments plus pictures.)


Yesterday I went on the strangest hike I've ever been on. Three girls from my program and I went on a hike with one of the hiking clubs here in Seville. We met just before 9 am at the train station, then divided up into cars and drove to the trailhead with a stop for breakfast along the way. 

The hike started out on roads/trails that wound through people's farms.   

Evidently there aren't many public parks in Andalucia, most of it is "natural parks" that are private property that people can still walk through. 

After going through the farm, we ended up in this field with lots of interesting rocks.

Then we scrambled up to the top of this "mountain," which reminded me a bit of scrambling with friends at Vedauwoo in '08. 

We went up the right side, since as you can see the left side is a cliff.  You can see the road we drove up on off to the left.

Here's one of the guys in the club scrambling over the rocks to get to the top.

We finally made it to the top!

There were some really cool vultures we could see from the top.

And the rocks had eroded in really interesting ways.  They made good handholds.

Us Americans tried to eat on top, but evidently that was the fruit break. Then we descended and we tried to eat lunch again, but evidently the lunch break wasn't until 3 pm. The group split up and we went with one group.  The landscape was slightly different in each area we went.

And of course we went through another farm.

Here's Paige, Rachel, and Eliza, the three girls from my program I went with.

We finally had lunch!

After lunch, our smaller group split again, so we went with the group that was going to get back in 1.5 hours as opposed to 3 hours (however the 3 hour group somehow got back before us). 

There were a bunch of goat skeletons in the area.

The trees were also really interesting.  Many were mostly hollow, and this one just looked like a great place to sit.

There were more interesting rock formations.

We then went off trail (well, the majority of the trip was off trail, but this was really off trail) to look for some cave/arch that people evidently knew about. But we couldn't find it, so we then started to descend. No one had a map or seemed completely sure of where we were going, but no one seemed bothered by that either and they said we just had to descend. 

So we did (it was starting to get dark), and we eventually hit a farm right next to the road/trail we needed to take to get to the road where we had parked our cars. 

So, of course some people just opened the gate to this private property and we walked through a pasture with a ton of goats to get to the road. Baby goats are adorable, by the way. 

We finally got back, but some other people were still out for even an hour past when it was completely dark, and no one seemed bothered by that. It was a bit strange. We were waiting in the cars to stay warm while the rest of the people got back, and Liza asked if she could turn on a light to read, so our driver went and got a candle and lit it for her.  We then stopped for dinner somewhere on the way back to Seville and got back around 11 pm.

I had read on the website that it was a 6 hour hike, so I had planned on being back to Seville by 3 pm, in time for a late lunch. Needless to say, I was not prepared to be out for the whole day, but at least I had enough snacks and water to hold me over even if I was quite hungry and probably a bit dehydrated by the time we got to the restaurant for dinner. My legs were a bit sore too. Anyway, it was a ridiculous hike, but it was gorgeous too! We were hiking near some of the white towns in the mountains south of Seville, and the rock formations were so pretty! The day was completely not what I expected, but I met some nice people, when on a fun hike, and learned that hiking here (at least with that group) is a lot different than back home.