Yesterday was a great adventure day – I temporarily left behind the concrete, sand and salt water of Cádiz and escaped to a much greener and mountainous region of Cádiz province for a day of hiking. To give the briefest of summaries, the day started at 8:30 when I got in a stranger’s car, drove to the southern tip of Spain, saw Africa from across the Strait of Gibraltar, and then hiked about through some small mountains/extremely large hills for 10 miles, out of which at least 2 had absolutely no defined trail. It sounds sketchy, but I promise it wasn’t, just lots of fun to be out in nature and seeing more of the surrounding area.
I got to go on this adventure pretty much out of luck – one of the teachers at my friend Lauren’s school invited her to go hiking this weekend and I was asked if I wanted to go too, so of course I said yes and tagged along! We got a ride with the teacher and her friend, and after much a few minor delays, eventually met up with 6-7 other Spaniards who were all going on the hiking trip with us. Lauren, Cat (another auxiliar friend who was also on the trip with us), and I had no idea where we were going until we were already in the car on our way. To our surprise/delight, we discovered our destination was just outside of Tarifa (southernmost city Europe)… great!!!
After driving for an hour or two, we got to the starting point of the hike… no official signs or anything, just a dirt road climbing up to the mountains. A few people in the group knew a fair amount about some of the plants and things in the area, so it was interesting to learn about that. The area where we were (still don’t know its exact name… haha) is part of a microclimate, which is so the flora there is different than in other parts of Andalucía. Some of the plants I saw were cork trees, frutas de bosque, and these weird wooden spheres that could be potentially be mistaken for enlarged acorns. It turns out they weren’t actually any type of food, but rather temporary worm houses. Oh, and a quick did you know fact about cork: that since it is essentially the tree’s bark that is stripped off, any given tree can only be harvested every 9 years or so... since a lot of wine is produced here, I’m assuming the demand for cork is also quite high. Other noteworthy things about the hike include the presence of pine trees (okay, not that exciting except for the fact that I hadn’t seen one in a while and I miss them), crossing paths with random cows and sheep, and almost being blown away from intense, ever present wind that the area near the Strait is known for. Anyway, further details about the hike can be much better described by pictures, so I’ll post the ones from my camera now and add some more from Cat and Lauren’s cameras when I get them!
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| Day Trips |
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