Spain #4 - Monachil
Go ahead and check out the images made in and around Monachil, from HERE.
Let’s get one thing out of the way. Staying in Sierra Nevada is expensive, so we stayed 30 minutes away by car from that and 15 minutes away by car from the closest McDonalds in Granada. The last bit of information is important information, but why, Dario, why? Well, let me tell You why!
We usually change places on Sundays (this changes now after Monachil, but after Switzerland this has been the case). And we know very well that on Sundays, most of the smaller stores are closed, especially in small villages. This far we have been lucky and found a store that was open either on location or on the way. This time was no different. What was different was that we hadn’t been to a restaurant for a long time and thus bought only stuff for the morning from the store (to go to a proper shop on the next day). Set the destination on google maps and off we went in a hurry to a restaurant which was open until 20:00, google said. The sign in front of the restaurant said the same, when we arrived there 15 minutes after the journey from home. But it wasn’t open. The next one wasn’t open either. A woman, who didn’t say a word in English, came and told us that All the restaurants are closed on that day. Maybe it was a holiday of some kind or the restaurants were open during the summer season, but that was open? But we stayed hungry and were even more hungry because of an hour of thinking we could have food. At least there was a McDonalds 15 minutes away by car.
The problem with this is… Even at home I’d rather pay 3 euros for someone to bring me food instead of me driving 10+ minutes to get it myself. Here it’s even worse, because of the roundabouts. I have seen one that takes in cars from 5 lanes and goin going on without any lanes on the roundabout. Meaning… My logic…anyone on the inner lines could want to turn right at any time and would do it… Or if you’re on the inside, maybe you’d have to go round 4 times to get out? I don’t know, if that’s the case, but in my experience in a less crowded street, a woman stopped in the middle of the roundabout, because she was on the inner lane, thus had to let me go first and came after me. I can’t imagine this situation with 3 more cars in between us. Now, the 5 row roundabouts I saw only in Valencia (one of the reasons we didn’t drive there), here there have been 3 max, usually 2 in other places. Still not logical, and still they cause me stress. So it wasn’t easy for me, nor did it taste as good, because my heart had been set on a Restaurant burger already.
We had a lot to do in Monachil
There were a few hikes that started right outside our apartment building (same first 40 minutes, but then it would divide into several hikes)
There was the Sierra Nevada National park
If those weren’t enough already (would make sense that they were), the girls also wanted to do some shopping.
And shopping they did on one day, taking Emmi with them, leaving me to do whatever. I could have taken a hike, but instead, for whatever reason I just stayed home and wrote down stuff in too much detail, but still nothing interesting (blog about France). Looking back… what a wasted opportunity (on the other hand… for how long can I postpone something that I promised myself I’d be doing on the trip). Edited some pics of spain also, but something was wrong with my eyes on that day, they’re just awful. What’s even more awful, is that I don’t plan on re-editing them, because even if I get on track with the blog… I’m still almost 2 months behind the video editing, can’t postpone that either.
Ruta de Los Cahorros
We gave Saskia a choice. Either go on a 2h45m hike with us on our first hiking day. Or drive 45 minutes and then take a longer hike and drive 45 minutes back on another day. She chose the easier option that was available for that specific day. So we went without here. She would have loved it:
There were hanging bridges, one was even more than just 5 meters. For some reason, the bridges don’t scare us that much any more. Or at least these small ones which seemed quite okay didn’t.
There was a waterfall, which wasn’t wider than one in Estonia. Nor was it taller than one in Estonia (I think). Was multiple times smaller than the waterfall I saw in Austria when driving to southern Europe (and let’s not get into Iceland’s waterfalls). So… I’m sorry for not being too excited about it. But it was a waterfall, and you don’t see one every day.
And the highlight was the gorge. The possibility to walk on the bottom next to the river. Saskia would have loved that, had to twist and turn (be on your knees to move on) to get past the big rocks on the sides blocking our way). Well I had to twist and turn. Reet’s hiking shoes are like gumboots. Do what you want, water doesn’t get through. So, as she had the gumboots, she had the possibility to just walk on the river (which was like 30 cm deep max at times) with Emmi on her back (otherwise we would have needed to turn back). The pics don’t do this experience justice (though maybe they do… it’s not like it was at any time life threatening, nor did the views in the gorge make us go WOW, HOLY…
Then. After the narrow part of the Gorge and a short lunch, we needed to go up. Turns out, that this hike didn’t contain any peaks. So it was just going up to some random height and then going back down. There were paths to peaks, we just didn’t choose them, because they were longer, also there was no internet when in the Gorge, so we couldn’t exactly take out Alltrails app and check if they would have been worth it. The random height, though, was still something I’ll remember for some time - Overlooking the gorge, was pretty and the way back with the olive trees. It’s just sad that we didn’t enjoy it, because Reet felt like she had been deceived, the hike should have lasted for 2:45h, but lasted for a total of ~5 hours for us. What gives? Why doesn’t Alltrails app consider all the stops we needed to take because of difficult terrain (narrow roads and walking in the river) and Emmi’s and Reet’s eating habits? Why?
But was the hike for people with a baby? Definitely no!
Pico Veleta
And then the day came for Sierra Nevada. Sorry, I meant the Sierra Nevada national park, because we had no interest in Sierra Nevada village? City? We probably should have had, but it’s like with everything with us, Let’s go there, let’s see what we can do there for a few hours, let’s not read anything about it’s history or what else you could do there. It’s just… We have just so little time and I really really wanted a proper hike.
I can’t say that the walking path to Pico Veleta was a proper hiking path, it was kind of… too easy? I’m not saying that the hike was easy, far from it, but the road. I could have taken a paved road almost to the peak, had I wanted to walk a bit longer. That’s just too easy!
But, ascending 850m, from 2500ish to 3394 is no joke. It seems like a joke if you see people much older than us and people 3x younger than us (or even Saskia) just skip to and at the top singing kumbaya… When I was struggling to breathe by the end… or to lift my leg to a rock that’s taller than 5cm and then to give myself a push to step on it. But was I glad I did it? It’s the highest I have ever been, so Yes, I think this is the highlight of the whole Europe. Nothing can or will beat that in Europe. And we did it together, all of us, as a family. Not just me alone, so this is something we can all go ahead and talk too much about in the future to our friends and family. And then you’d think that you’d want to go as well. And then you go and you’ll be disappointed, because you weren’t out of breath. Well, too bad for you, eat more McDonalds!
Ah, also, because we do everything much longer than what Alltrails app says, we arrived back to the parking lot a few minutes after sunset, so, being able to see the sunset from ~2500+ meters after a long hard hike, isn’t a bad experience either, imagine if we’d even take the time to just sit down and enjoy it as well. Maybe sometime in the future. This time we walked during the sunset and sat around in the parking lot after the sunset, enjoying the blue hour I guess.
Also, while the drive to Sierra Nevada was fun (for me) and had great views. Coming down when it was dark, wasn’t fun at all. The main path was okay. But at one point, inevitably, I had to turn towards our village, and that road had no white lines and it could fit maybe 1,5 cars. Let’s just say that it lasted a lot longer than going up lasted (and in my mind it lasted even longer). Reminded me of our US drive from Las Vegas to Lone pine after watching the sunset in Death Valley > scary and felt endlessly long.
Other notes
Did you see that I didn’t complain about our accommodation? It’s because It was great.
I didn’t mention our village either. That was great as well. I think. We only went to one café and twice shopping for groceries and the rest of the time just enjoyed the views from our balcony (and they were great). But the people in the bar below our apartment seemed to enjoy themselves. Also… a hiking path from our front door. Come on. That’s... like a dream that had to end, because Saskia wanted to go swimming.
