Our hotel was really quite nice. Maybe it was because the town of Grazalema is somewhat fancier than the village of Bubión. Mark’s page for this day, Thursday, says something about roosters crowing soon after we got up; but my clear memory is that this is the town where cocks crew all night long. At breakfast, Nick warned us that we might not have a chance to have lunch, what with the bad weather threatening, so we should load up with food while we could.
For some reason, we didn’t have the services of a van for getting us up to the trail head at the entrance to the Parque Natural Sierra de Grazalema, so we would have to take cabs; and there were only two of those available, so there had to be two runs by one of the cars, three by the other, to get us all up and ready for setting out. Mark and I were in the first trip out, and this meant that we had to wait for quite a while for all the others to show up. It was windy up there, getting ready for our walk. The longer we waited, the colder and windier it got, and then it even started to rain. We were ready to get moving! While we waited, though, Teague, Joyce, Cindy, and Judy all calmed their shivering long enough to hold still for photos. (Small image, large)
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Once we got started, it seemed that we were climbing up, up, and up. Not truly challenging or extremely steep, but it was an effort, made easier by occasional pauses. The weather was extremely changeable there, though, which meant that we were continually putting our cameras away to keep them dry, and then just a little later, pulling them out to grab a shot. There was wind, sometimes fierce and dry, sometimes wet, and sometimes the rain fell without wind. Every possible combination. The pictures to the right (top: small image, large; middle: small image, large; bottom: small image, large) were taken an hour or so after we started the walk, the top one being only a quarter-hour earlier than the lower two.
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Not long after the pictures to the right were taken, we got to a flat open place, very exposed and windy, where we rested for a good little while, and took pictures, even though the skies were grim and not welcoming of photography. In the upper picture to the left (small image; large), you see Ralph, Marilyn (I think), then in the distance Mark and Nick, then Nadji, and Judy with her head down against the wind. In the lower, Judy talks to perhaps Nadji just out of the frame, then Joyce and Marilyn, and finally a wind-blown Caroline adjusts her socks (small image; large). As you can see in the upper picture, a number of hardy souls, surely including Rita and Oakley, climbed up to the top of the conical peak overshadowing our stopping-place. They probably ran up. But Mark and I were not minded to seek that kind of excess exercise.
And then we were on our way again. Much of the walk was on craggy paths along the side of a mountain slope, as you see in the two pictures in the next group to the left. (Upper: small image, large; lower: small image, large.) Somehow, I didn’t expect the terrain to be as rough and geologically new-looking as all of this seemed to me.
Mark wasn’t particularly enamored of the picture below, but I like it, and I think it deserves pride of place in this page. You can see the layers we were wearing. Mark has on a sweat band under his Tilley hat, and over that, the hood of his rain gear. The hats are almost perfectly waterproof, but the drips off them could get annoying.
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