Leaving our sweet little studio apartment in Villanueva de la Concepción on a quiet Sunday morning, we headed one block over to pick up the camino. Ahead of us was the impressive karst ridge El Torcal. When Nedjo queried, "I assume we just go straight up", I had to laugh. He meant the road but I envisioned the thought of tackling that behemoth. "We go around I'm pretty sure."
It was a day of unimaginable vistas which just seemed to get better as the morning unfolded. As with the day before, much of the day was on a dirt road, so easy on the feet with lots of ascents and descents—lengthening our poles when going down and shortening when going up and hence saving too much extra knee strain. At one point glancing back to take in where we'd just come from, we could see our fellow peregrinos (those walking a camino) from Estonia who we'd met a couple days earlier. We waited for them to catch up and enjoyed walking together for a time.
As we walked below El Torcal the colours of grey and peachy-pink intensified against the vivid blue sky, and unlike the day before when there had been some heavier cloud obscuring the top, today was clear with just a few wisps. Seeing where Torcal rose out of the ground as we walked beyond it was also impressive and soon another range, Las Chimeneas, dominated.
On one side of us was park and on the other farmland with private hunting. Knowing it was Sunday which can be a busy hunting day, I was glad once again that Nedjo is an orange kind of guy with an orange hiking shirt and an orange pack—pays to be good and visible.
Nearing noon we came to a viewpoint where the land drops sharply off and down below we could see the city of Antequera glowing brightly white in the midst of a surrounding plain. Gulp! It was going to be a long way down.
We stopped for nuts, mandarin oranges and some chocolate to fortify ourselves. Then down we went. There were mountain sheep grazing, their tinkling bells a sweet sound as we started out. And from even higher up we watched some kind of deer – could it have been an ibex? – come bounding down. The wide path was well engineered, but I did have to go down slowly (both for my knees and my fear of heights) and only admire the view when I wasn't at a place with a steep drop-off. There were a number of people out for Sunday hikes, as well as one trail runner who sped by. The descent became a series of switchbacks and soon we were down.
Now there was just a final four kilometres into the city, mainly on dirt roads, with only one sketchy part on a busy road. But we followed some local hikers to find the safer part to walk on and soon were on city streets with the alcazaba (fortress) making for a glorious entry. Unlike other end-point town of the past few days, we actually had to descend further to get to our hotel (Hotel Manzanito, €50) where we had much needed showers after a warm and challenging day, then enjoyed Chinese food for lunch, had a short nap and set out to explore this stunning city. Tomorrow is a rest day, in part so we can take in the sights. And we're both very much looking forward to that.