A story to go with the pictures: Skipping Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all (a little late)!!! Phillip and I celebrated Christmas a little differently this year. Instead of flying home for the holidays we decided to use Phil´s two weeks of vacation from work to travel and see some more of Spain. Our destination was Andalusia, or more specifically the region around Malaga.
We took the long train ride (6 hours) from Valdepeñas to Malaga and arrived in this seaside town to discover it was raining. This somewhat changed our plans since we were thinking we would go to a national park called El Chorro the first weekend to do some climbing, but are plans were flexible and instead we decided to begin our trip with a tour of some of the pueblos blancos. For those of you who may not know, these are a bunch of small white-washed towns (hence the name pueblos blancos) in the mountains between Granada and Sevilla. Many of them do not have much turist attraction except the beauty and thrill of driving around a curve in the mountains and being confronted with the stark contrast of the green landscape and a clump of white on a mountain point that seems to be tumbing down the hillside to you. Well after renting the car in Malaga we made our way up a small winding road on the side of a mountain, in the dark and the rain until we reached the first pueblo blanco, Ronda. We walked around the next day seeing the famous bridges that span a gorge that splits the two sides of the town. We then drove on to a few more that day, the highlight being one that has buildings dug into the side of the hill/rock. It was really cool and all the steets were tiny! Phillip managed to drive through them without scratching the car or taking out any pedestrians :) One part of a street was even overhung with rock so that it was like a tunnel, but on each side were houses. It was really interesting.
After our driving tour of some of the pueblos blancos we ended up in Malaga for church on Sunday. From there we headed along the coast with the final goal of reaching Almería and the section of the coast to the east called Caba de Gata which we planned to hike. Along the way we visited the caves in Nerja which were very spectacular but a little too comercialized for our liking. The caves were discovered rather recently, in the 60´s, which gave Phil and I hope that we can still discover our own cave one day ;) We set up camp for the night in the town of Motril and were able to watch the very important soccer match of Real Madrid vs. Barcelona that night.
The next day we made it to Almería which is a town on the coast, but it is much drier and desert looking like. We had trouble finding parking in the city and were not so much interested in walking around and being turists so we just checked out the bus schedule for the coast of Caba de Gata so that we could leave the car on one end and start on the other. We drove on to the tiny village of Agua Amarga, which was to be the start of our 3-4 day hiking trip along the coast. Phil dropped me off here, drove the car to the village where we would end up and caught a bus from that town to Almería, from Almería to Agua Amarga. This took about a span of 5 hours so when Phil finally met up with me again it was 7:30 at night and dark. We did some night hiking for about 45min. and came upon a cove where we camped on the beach for the night. It was beautiful and very secluded. The route that we were hiking made it´s way along the coast (as you can see by the pics in the posts below) which were very rugged but it also went through little coast towns/villages maybe for every three hours of walking or so. It is supposed to be the driest part of the coast of Spain and the contrast of the blue blue Medetierranian and then, in one part, the black lava rock cliffs is absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately the weather wasn´t the best (some rain one day, and somewhat cold) so we weren´t able to go swimming, or should I say, we chose not to freeze our butts off and go swimming :) But no, it wasn´t that cold, much warmer and sunnier than Valdepeñas. We spent three nights on the trail and arrived at the end, late Thursday morning, tired, hungry, and in need of a shower. After eating the most disgusting looking hamburgers I have every seen (they tasted ok but were a shade of bright purple), we got in the car and headed for El Chorro, to spend the rest of our time rock climbing. On the way we did some sight seeing. We drove through the "desert" of Spain were they filmed some westerns. We stopped in a town that had a neighborhood which all the houses were caves. We also made the mistake of trying to stop in Granada during rush hour/shopping hour/everybody out on the streets hour, only to sit in traffic and drive through countless traffic circles without finding parking. So we wasted probably a few hours in Granada. . . doing nothing, trying to get out. We finally made it to the town of Antequerra (close to El Chorro) where there is another park called El Torcal (also good for climbing) where we camped for the night.
The next day we climbed in Torcal, which was really cool cause it had all these rock formations that are slabs stacked upon one another. Good for climbing too :) That night (this would be Friday now) we drove on to El Chorro and finally set up camp for more than just one night. El Chorro was full of climbers from all over the world. It is probably the warmest area in Europe during Christmas to climb and it well-known for it´s limestone so. . . there were lots of people. We did some climbing Saturday and walked around a bit. There is a river that cuts through this really tall (and not too wide) canyon of rock walls. A long time ago a catwalk was built on the side of this to allow the king (i´m not sure which one) to walk along it. It´s called el camino del rey and it´s not recommended to walk on it now because it´s falling apart and some areas are missing. Supposedly some of the best climbing is back through the canyon but you must go on the walk way or through the many train tunnels which are guarded during the day by guards. We didn´t do this but. . . maybe next time.
On Sunday we went to Antequerra for church and they were having a Christmas potluck lunch so we were invited to that. Afterwards we went to El Torcal (since it was close and there were less people here) to climb for a few hours before it got dark. We spent the night in El Chorro once again and then the next morning I caught a train back to Valdpeñas. Phil stayed in El Chorro and found someone to climb with until that Friday (Jan 3).
So Christmas was little different for us this year. We missed our family a lot and wished we could have spent it with them, but it was also good to not be caught up in all the whirlwind of the holidays, not having to buy any presents or make a bunch of food. We enjoyed seeing more of God´s creation and seeing new places. Next year though I plan on spending Christmas with all my family :)