Lisboa

Crossing the border into Portugal was as simple as driving over an imaginary line... But even though that line was imaginary, Portugal looked and felt like a foreign place to us. Spain was filled with overly cautious drivers that drove well under the speed limits and never passed on the right. As soon as we were in Portugal, we were illegally passed by a Porsche Carrera 4, so we spent the next 2 or 3 hours following him! It was a refreshing change from driving 10km/h under the limit in Spain! We made it to Lisbon (an hour faster than expected) and we were pleasantly surprised to find easy parking at our Airbnb, which is good because Joey was pretty brain dead after our 8 hour drive and 3 hours of climbing.

After that exhausting day, we had to find some Coffee.  

Since we were about out of the coffee that we had brought with us, we did a little research on some local coffee roasters. Luckily for us we found Fabrica Coffee Roasters, which was a small coffee shop tucked away down a small street near one of the central Lisbon areas. We bought two cappuccinos (one Brazil and one Rwanda) and were immediately impressed! Both of the cups were really complex and the Brazilian beans were crazy sweet.  So we told the barista that we were brewing with a pour-over and she recommended 2 bags for us. They turned out delicious as well!

Off to explore and make our way to the Sao Jorge Castle. 

After being in small Spanish villages for the past couple weeks, the first thing we noticed in Lisbon was the crazy diversity. The streets were full of people from all over the world! We were happily surprised with how diverse Lisboa is. The street graffiti was 'diverse' too.

After an hour or so of walking we made it to Sao Jorge Castle. The caste dates back to the medieval times finding human presence all the way back to the 6th century BC!

The view from the castle overlooked the historic center of Lisbon

It was so beautiful that I couldn't stop crying... Or something like that :)

But luckily there was a cat with some of the dopest eyes to console and comfort me. We sat with this cat long enough that people asked if it were ours.

Eventually we left the cat and found PEACOCKS!

They were tougher to pet though.

One of the main reasons that we came to Lisbon was for the New Years celebration. I wanted a place that we could watch fireworks over water. The best place to celebrate was at the Praca do Comercio, which is located on the Tagus river. There were about 20k people there bringing in the new year with us.

The start to 2017 was unforgettable, I was a lucky lady kissing an amazing man with fireworks bursting over the river and we were front row!

We passed by this huge fountain every night too! It made Joey think about how much his family likes fountains (his sister loves them I think).

It was time to find some dang rocks to climb though! So, off to the sea cliffs of Cascais to climb into the sunset.

 It was almost as majestic as Joey's hair.

Our time in Lisboa had to come to an end because we have a 10 hour drive in the morning over to Costa Blanca. We are going to stay at the Orange House climbing refugee and climb the surrounding areas.

So we will leave you with a traditional decorative Lisbon tile dating back to medieval times... 

Its never a bad idea to end a blog with a naked baby tile, right?

Paragliding?

The next stop, Zahara! Here we are. We picked this place to be close to Algondonales so I could take Joey to go paragliding for his Christmas present!... 

Unfortunately, the weather decided to change from sunny and delightful to ever so slightly cloudy, which apparently meant that we couldn't go paragliding anymore... So of course we decided to explore the surrounding area.

While searching for places to stay around Algondonales, we stumbled on Zahara and a picture of a fella that had hiked up to the castle at the top. He was very sweaty and looked like he had a real hard time. On the way up we realized how steep the path was and I literally could not stop laughing.... Of course, Joey captured the moment. It was seriously steep and they probably had a really hard time creating it.

And the view from the top was well worth it.

Spain sure is a purdy Country.

Almost so much I contemplated giving my life to it.. 

jk jk jk We all know that will be to a LION

The town of Zahara was originally a Moorish outpost, ruled by the Arabs in 1407 and then captured by Castillean troops under command of Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, Duke of Cadiz in 1483 and currently has a population of about 1,500. 

Surrounding the town is a botanical garden that had the most interesting fruit!

It was a soft squishy sphere with fuzzy nubbins with a orange/yellow color. After playing, smooshing, throwing a couple I found on the ground, I had to look it up...  They are arbutus strawberry's! From what I read, they are used to make jams and alcohol, and have a tart flavor which makes them unsuitable to eat off the plant.

I liked killing them...

But it was time to get out of this little town and search for more adventure or maybe rock! So, we found a cave! This cave is called Cueva del Gato or Cave of the Cat, due to its cat like appearance, which we never saw. Typically we have a good imagination and we all know I love cats, but I just couldn't envision a cat in this cave. Anywhosie... The cave was formed by the Gaduares river eroding its way through the Algarrobo mountains.

I was very excited by this cave...

I just wanted to keep going further!! But it was not safe. According to the warnings, multiple people die in this cave each year.

Nope nope nope. 

But Joey still looks handsome, so that's good at least.

 

 That also makes me happy

But then I hit my banged up knee on a really hard rock... Rocks are hard. 

And Joey was sure to capture it.  

Now its time to go explore Ronda!

Which included this super old looking bridge, named Puente Nuevo. Suprisingly it was built in 1793, which when compared with similar looking buildings, is pretty new.

And we needed to get some lunch. Joey was having a hard time seeing, so I lent him my glasses.

And he got all artsy on me.

Then it was time to check out a close by tufa crag that was supposed to be amazing despite the lack of online topos/guides.

The walk to the crag was fantastic with interesting rock walls, chossy but beautiful, with a nice creek running to next to it. The wall was a limestone conglomerate that turned out to be better quality than it originally looked. We went in for a closer look.

We found that the rock was actually pretty solid, even though the only bolted routes were on the tufas. We also found that the local developers enjoyed bolting plastic routes on the wall as well. Oh... They also glued on some real rocks to give it a cobblestone feel. So, we decided not to go back here.

But then we found this sweet calcite tufa crag in Portugal called, Escusa. The climbing was great and I got to see what it's like to climb out of a cave!! 

 

It's hard to take pictures with only two people while climbing... ;-)

Our calcite tufa climbing came to an end and we had to finish our drive to Lisbon to enjoy a very memorable New Years!