Falling and climbing!

After 8 hours of driving, we finally arrived to our climbing destination, El Chorro! 

First thing we did when we got there was go to the... MERCADONA. Which happens to be an amazing grocery store with amazing store brand products made in Spain. Seriously, its good...

Next we went to the 'Arab Steps' sector of the Frontales, which is one of the sectors on the big wall above the village of El Chorro. It was filled with slabby gray limestone. Long technical moderate routes. The crag also had steps made in the Moorish period, which is where the name 'Arab Steps' comes from.

Here is Markie's favorite route of the wall. An overhanging 6a dihedral with a large crystal geode at the top. The photo shows her getting excited when she found the geode. She is basically sitting inside it.

Next, we enjoyed some Mercadona store brand chocolate, which happened to be Markie's favorite chocolate of the trip so far... If you didn't know, we buy new chocolate at every grocery store we go to. Yep.

And watched the sunset.

We decided to go to a totally different place the next day, which was outside of the main El Chorro area...

Desplomilandia!!!

This place was filled with good climbs in the 6a to 6c range (our range). It was also filled with cool climbers like Jamie

We ended up spending a few days here, because Miss Markie found a project... It was a super sandbagged 6a+ (5.10) that included really fun overhanging pockets. She managed to fall 4 times while clipping, blowing the clip all 4 times and scaring the entire crag. She barely missed hitting the ledge below each time. Scared the shit out of me. So we came back the next day, and she sent first go. It was a really great route. 

Markie is pointing to the spot where she was missing her clip... :)

After sending the overhanging pocket route and learning about falling while clipping, she decided to try the wall's namesake route 'Buena Sombra' 6b+/5.11a. This was a long route with a sweet tufa crux, which is harder than it looks (I tried it once and didn't send). Markie put some work into this route and after a few goes, it seemed like she was going to send. We came back the next day and she gave it 2 goes and didn't nail the footwork. On the 3rd go, she managed to pass the tufa crux and the slab crux, but she got too stretched out on the slab above and fell... That project will remain a project!

Markie says 'On to the next!' but I think she is still thinking about it :)

On that final day, we coincidentally ran into a climber (Katie) that I met this spring at Bishop, in the Happies. Michael Pang introduced me to her and she is mega mega strong. We had a chance to photograph and watch her climb a cool 7c+ in the cave next to where we were climbing Buena Sombra.

On our way out, we were greeted with a treat... A farewell fog!

And Zahara de la Sierra here we come!

We are fans of ceilings

We continued our adventure in Cuenca by exploring the city more and visiting some historical sites. 

Besides having the city built up on limestone walls Cuenca also had an amazing medieval cathedral. We learned that this happened to be one of the first Gothic cathedrals in Spain and was started in the late 1100's and finished in 1257.

The church itself was quite impressive with many relics, including some strange relics that we will share later but we were most impressed with the ceilings... So here are some sweet ceiling shots!!

This one is our favorite! \/

The amount of detail contained in the ceilings was quite hard to capture, its also tough to understand the size of each ceiling, so you'll have to believe us... They were big, intricate, and they instilled a curiosity in us.

It seemed like they spent more time on the ceilings than anything else. My neck hurt from looking up so much but it was hard not to! 

We needed to bring the belay glasses!

Enough of the ceilings though...

What's a church without a naked baby standing on a skull?

Or how about this... We are not really sure what this is but it scared both of us.

We are sure about this... And it seems like a very important book.

And on this note we say good bye to one of the most interesting and really interesting churches we have seen (trying not to say creepy...)

As we wrote this post we realized that we missed capturing a photo of one of the weirdest things in this church. They had bones in capsules attached to fake limbs. One of the bones we saw was a radial bone in a glass cylinder attached to a fake hand. Bizarre! (still avoiding 'creepy')

Our final day in Cuenca ended with the church and we decided to visit some abandoned villages on the way to El Chorro... OF COURSE!

These villages were not nearly as impressive as the first but they had some character... One of them was downright creepy (yep. creepy.)

It had things hanging from the ceilings everywhere... Yep more ceilings. All of the ceilings.

Our stay was short though, because I caught Markie looking out the window looking for more Spanish Limestone...

She thought she saw some...

But she didn't... So she kept lookin!

Thats when I realized that I needed to get her out of there and on to the next abandoned village...

Unfortunately for us, this village was re-inhabited and they didn't seem very friendly. So off to El Chorro to climb some rocks, all of the rocks.

Next post will be a CLIMBING POST!!!!!!!

Miss Markie has found a project in El Chorro and she managed to fall a whole bunch too!

Limestone town

Here we are......Cuenca. 

We stumbled across this town while on our way to El Chorro, and heard it had lots of rocks. It looks like we were right. We also learned that there are a couple hundred routes surrounding the city that you can climb!

Time to explore...

Which made Joey very happy.

Through all the excitement, Joey found a very interesting picture within the bars of a door... He had wondered off and came back with a huge grin on his face. This made me very curious. I asked what he was up to and he responded with, "Oh, don't you worry, but you are going to love it." So, we continued onward. Going through the pictures tonight revealed the mystery. 

As you can see, I thought it was hilarious.

The city of Cuenca, pronounced 'kwenka, has seen multiple regimes. It was founded by the Moors due to its defensive advantages (sweet limestone walls surrounding the city). Around the 12th century the city was taken by the Christians led by Alfonso VIII. Due to this history, there are many significant cultural sites and the city is even a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. It earned this recognition because it is one of the most well preserved medieval towns in the world. 

                                                                                                                                                                  Here I am overlooking the city and exploring an ancient walkway/aqueduct.

There are an abundance of ruins in Spain, so of course we would run into one during our stroll. This one has a particularly funny story. Joey happen to be pretty afraid of these orange fellas. 

So we had to get a little closer and maybe a little more scared!

Up close these guys were so real looking, they even had knuckle creases/wrinkles. 

Here you can see the walkway/aqueduct that we were walking on. We saw the orange crew from there.

We also had a chance to explore the city at night and found a nice Christmas market, tons of bread, some sweets, but no good places to eat. So, of course, we just ate bread and pastries for dinner because we are adults and don't need veggies anymore.

Yum.

We also had to tell Santa what we wanted for Christmas... Santa reminded Joey of his parents because of how many coke cans he had.

Abandoned in España

While staying at Abella Climbing, we were talking to the Refugi's caretaker Lili about things to see outside of climbing, she told us about some abandoned villages that she has studied. We asked her if there were rocks and she said they were built with rocks!! So of course we had to go!

But first, we found some fog.

And then we found some sheeps!! Markie started out the trip saying she wanted to play with sheeps, then they suddenly appeared right in our path. Later, while eating lunch outside of the abandoned village Lili had told us about, Markie sat on a rock listening to the sound of their bell clanking as they ran across the hills. (which was a pretty neat sound...)  

After that excitement, we were ready for some creepy, rocky, adventure stuffs! 

Here we are.

The town was called Aramunt Vell. It was a medieval town, first documented in 959, that was strategically placed on the top of a hill overlooking a small valley and the bigger Tremp basin. The last inhabitants left in the '60s or '70s but the town has been revisited since that time. 

These people apparently liked their liquor or they were using these barrels for something else?

Pretty sure they were eating with this bowl.

Whoa! Thats me! In a medieval house.

And some vines!! They happen to be one of the most structurally significant pieces of the village... Or at least it looks like it.

Aramunt Vell also contained a medieval church. It was the largest building in the village and had the most intact and beautiful structure.

After spending some time inside the church, we decided that it was time to leave this old, beautiful, deserted city and head out to find another. Or maybe just a nice sunset spot.

As you can see, leaving made Markie's head hurt.

But.... 

We found cats

And we couldn't decide which cat photos to share our story with... 

Sometimes you're trying to get your portrait taken, but someone decides to ninja attack the tree behind you.

We liked them... So we took em with us.

Hiding behind all of the cats, was this gorgeous church on the top of a massive limestone slab. The church was directly against the cliff edge. Unfortunately the rock quality was poor at best, so there was no opportunity to climb up to the Church.

Markie is still looking purdy.

The village's name is 'Santa Engracia' and it is situated above the Tremp Basin near Talaren.

We never saw another person out there in this cute village but we certainly didn't feel lonely with all of the cats around.

And you can clearly see that Markie was happy about that!

We are also sad to say that our stay has ended at Abella Climbing and we are headed off to Cuenca, about 6 hours south.

This awesome homie greeted us as we arrived to another ancient town!