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!