Travelling In Andalusia – Part Four

We hire a car (booked before we left the UK) in Granada. The plan is to drive up into the Sierra Nevada and stay there a few days, and then drive to Ronda and back to Seville.

We stop off at a village and have lunch sitting outside by the road. We get talking to the proprietor and he offers us tiger nuts. I ate them when I was a child, but these are soft like tiny grapes.

We learn that they are underground tubers of a grass – and that they are found entwined with the roots of other plants. We laugh at life and remark how with tiger nuts it has taken me decades to know what I was eating as a child.

We drive on and the road ascends and we are into the mountains. We see how very narrow and twisty the road is. I invent a new word for the hairpin turns. ‘scarepin turns’.

Capileira

We drive into the clouds until we reach our destination – Capileira – the highest and most northerly of the three villages in the gorge of the Poqueira river in the La Alpujarra district.

This is Capileira from above where the road ends and the track continues over the mountains.

Capileira in Las Alpujarras

Mist

And here is the village shrouded in mist that comes and goes throughout the day. It is noticeably colder here in the mountains and wonderfully peaceful.

Capileira in Las Alpujarras

From Our Hotel Window

And this is the view from our hotel window. These tall chimneys are everywhere and add to the mystery of the houses that are linked together with overhead buttresses and interlinked paths against a blinding white backdrop of thick walls.

The streets are very steep and the village is cut off for part of the winter when ice takes hold.

Capileira rooftops - view from our hotel window

Brief Encounter

I met this man and horse on their way down while I was walking to get a view of the village. I am so pleased with the shot. It has all the immediacy of an impromptu shot, but it has good composition.

Our next stop is Ronda and a trip down the string of villages known as the White Towns.

Man with packhorse above Capileira in Las Alpujarras


If you missed it, Part Three of our travels across Andalucia, is here.