Back on track. We walk down from the Albaycin and hit the Plaza nueva and are greeted with a blue wave of people, balloons and banners. We find out that they are celebrating the river called El Río Darro which still exists today underneath the street we are walking on. They paved it over many years ago to make access for transportation of goods and people. Today you can still "go undergroud" to see the river flowing. Many people wish that it still flowed wild throughout the city.
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| Myles come un higo |
After a nice afternoon walk we return to the plaza for our last copa and are surprised again by an imrov musical group of the remainders of the festival. This time we have some fun with a Brazilian/Portuguese fellow guiding the group. Everyone dances, plays an instrument if they have one or use their beer bottles as percussion instruments. Carpe diem as they say.
Next in line is a long awaited day of fun on a mtn. bike for mom. Another beautiful fall day and kids are at school. I haven't had a chance to do anything like this for a long, long time so I take the whole day to get out and about and it's a good thing. First of all, there are no guidebooks here with intricate mtn. bike routes so my route finding skills were tested. In past weeks, on a daily basis I have seen between 20-100 riders heading up the Cuesta de Gomerez, our old stomping grounds below the Ahmambra. So, on this particular day I decide to head up...and up...and up...and up. Once I was above the Alhambra I was able to select from a variety of trails....hmmm....how many hours do I have? My plan is to continue up toward the Sierra Nevadas and eventually descend down into the Sacromonte hills of Granada. It all seems really easy and doable. I found some great trails, rode through a couple goat herds, a private finca and finally after riding by what appears to be an old Spanish farmhouse, shoot out into the village set above the Sacromonte.
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| Camino de Beas |
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| ¿Coincidencia? I think not. Next adventure takes us to an area North of Granada called Gorafe. Our intention is to celebrate Halloween in a cave, spend a day by the Embalse de Negratín, and try to soak in some natural hot springs at the end of it all. You should know that the boys are not very happy with me at this point because I've just talked about how this year we are not going to celebrate our normal holidays very much, if at all. They are devastated that I won't be spending money on cheaply made Halloween costumes, decorations, cards, gifts, unnecessary smelly stuff, a Christmas tree, wrapping paper, pink and red items made of sugar, chocolate Easter eggs, and the list goes on and on....you get the point. Well, they don't celebrate any of these holidays here the way we do. Of course they have Christmas and you can fall into the consumer trap we all do, but we have a plan to be in a country that will have nothing to do with this holiday. We'll keep you abreast as we get closer. Don't get me wrong friends....we're just doing a little test here and taking this time to reflect upon and remember what is truly special to us in life - friends and family.  We prepare to leave for Gorafe with our friends Chris, Stik, Sid, Sam, Dani, Sarah and Nikita. Even though we have no Halloween costumes to wear the boys are excited about the idea of riding in the back of Stik's classic LandRover through the hills and canyons of Spain. I'm excited for an adventure which soon proves to be just that. We leave Granada late in the day and pull into Gorafe at dusk. Unfortunately the cave we set up to rent for the night wasn't exactly what we had hoped it would be so we shack up in Dani and Sarah's cave and proceeded to begin the festivities. Chris, being the prepared hostess brings out her French cooking appliance called a Raclette. It's kind of similiar to fondu where you share a group cooking experience. Each person has an individual cooking tray in which you place your cheese (called Raclette as well) in the bottom portion of the appliance. Once melted you pour over your potatoes, jamón and dip with bread...oh, and wash down with some Spanish vino de mesa and a few aceitunas - mmm, mmm, good. We've been so fortunate to meet such wonderfully, wordly people here in Granada. Spending time with these folks is sort of like reading a new novel you can't put down. You want to spend more and more time with them, but you don't want to go too fast for fear of coming to the end too quickly-instead savor every bite.   We also cooked quail eggs on the Raclette which were pretty yummy. All in all the evening was really a nice treat with wonderful company. We took a little walk around Gorafe at about 10:30 thinking we might be able to find some chuches and try to do a bit of trick-or-treating but only found a few high schoolers leaving the local discoteca. By the way, the main stage for the discoteca was adorned with various crosses. We couldn't figure out if that was the typical interior design of the techno, strobe-lit scene or if it was special for Halloween...  The next day we decide to try and take a back route to Negratín through some absolutely beautiful countryside. It looks almost identical to the southwest where Brad and I lived in the states.  In nutshell we are unable to get to our destination after driving most of the day coming to this point where we had to cross a river which was just a little too high for the LandRover. Bummer! Stik and I say we have to return to figure out how to get to the lake cand hot springs via the backcountry roads.  Our final stop is to check out the tombs of Gorafe or Dolmenes. I didn't think too much of these little holes in the ground until I did a little research. My goodness! Nothing too important...they only date back to the Neolithic period, 4000-3000 BC, usually consisting of three or more stones on the perifery of the tomb and sometimes have a table-top stone to cover. They are found all over Europe, some in Asia and the Middle East. No biggy. The boys ran around all the ancient tombs collecting "wheat" with their friends preparing to grind the husks and make bread when we returned home. At one point they sat down on the edge of the antiplano and stared out into the distance. "This place is like Moab, but with lots and lots of olive trees!" they exclaimed.  Spain is such a diverse country, in so many ways. When I lived in Madrid, I didn't have the chance to get out of the city too much. This weekend I was pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the countryside. When you climb up and out of Granada en route to Gorafe, you drive through snow-capped mountains reaching some 10K feet, then you eventually hit what's called the antiplano or high plateau, which is flat, flat, flat with olive trees galore. Our descent into the canyons before Negratín took us through any area quite similiar to the canyonlands of the desert Southwest. That's it for this post. I'm behind and already have enough good stuff for the next post! Unfortunately I haven't been very good about writing good quotes down lately and my memory doesn't serve me as well as it used to. Here are just a couple to make the grade. Besos y abrazos to all! "Eat your bread wisely." (Thanks Sara for helping me remember!) "Mom, I'm really, really speaking Spanish now!" "Can Digger and Kiva sleep with me in my bed for as long as I want when we get home?" "¡¡¡¡¡Cola-cao!!!!!" |