Granada is so lovely

Second impressions about Morocco

Morocco doesn’t deceive. It pleasantly surprises, reaffirms my belief in the fundamental goodness of humankind. It smiles, frequently. Laughs easily. Looks you in the eye when speaking. Is unhurried. Piles on motorbikes and weave through traffic, clad in sandals but not in helmets.

A glass of freshly squeezed orange juice is sold for what it’s worth — as little as 30 cents in Marrakesh and just one euro in a mountain hut. Toilets are uncomplicated — generally a pretty clean white hole and a bucket of water. Tea is the national drink. People both rise and go to bed early. This country knows what’s going on.

Discoveries made on this trip:

The town of Moulay Bousselham. Perched on a steep embankment overlooking a gorgeous long sandy beach, the town has one main street and no banks. It’s spitting distance from a lake that’s famous for its flocks of migratory birds, and thus has a handful of places to stay and two campgrounds. We loved its market lane, where we found delicious rolled bread snacks and jackknife clams fresh from the Atlantic at a price unthinkable in Spain.

Refuge du Toubkal (3,207 m / 10,521 ft). My experience in mountain huts is limited since I’m usually carrying a tent. But when you’re planning a significant ascent, huts offer a certain ease of mind. Almanzor’s Refugio Elola had been my most recent hut experience: surly caretaker, some not very nice holes in the ground for toilets, and too many rules. The Refuge du Toubkal was a welcome change. This hut seems to operate on the familiar Moroccan principle of organized chaos. At first glance things appear to be supremely disorganized and unregulated, but then everything sort of falls into place. The bathrooms were clean, rooms were big with lots of natural light, and there was a sort of pervasive good mood about the place, which in no doubt stemmed from the smiley, singing Moroccan staff under the direction of Ibrahim, tall and dark with a killer smile and a firm handshake. When the mountains’ shadows extended across the hut’s roof, the guests (Spanish, Italian, English, German, French …) piled into the dining room to play games, chat, and drink tea. In those very close quarters, people were cordial, climbing stories were exchanged, and pretension dissolved into the thin air.

It’s the simple things in life that are best. On our first evening in Morocco, we sat down in front of a café facing the 15th-century walls of Asilah and ordered mint tea. Deciding we were hungry, one of our group slipped across the street and bought a couple loaves of bread from a vendor and some fresh goat’s cheese from a man with a cart. That impromptu picnic tasted so good that we talked about it for the rest of the week. Now I wonder if it was the food and drink that was so delicious, or the combination of the eating and drinking, the sun setting on the city’s walls, and the feeling of empowerment that accompanies the start of any adventure.

I explain my reasons for posting about Morocco in a blog about Spain in my previous Morocco post.

Barrancos!

I had never even really heard of the sport Spaniards call barranquismo (canyoning or canyoneering in English) until I lived in Spain. But soon I found out enough about it to know that it was something I wanted to try.

Last weekend, four friends and I piled into a furgoneta with our guide and an experienced friend of his and headed to Huesca, the province of the Pyrenees in Aragón. In the next two days we journeyed through three different canyons near the southern part of Ordesa, one of the two Spanish national parks in the Pyrenees. Barranquismo consists of, essentially, the descent of a canyon with the natural obstacles this entails. It requires a fair amount of gear (see above photo): a full-body wetsuit with neoprene booties, a climbing helmet, a special harness with extra butt protection, boots or sneakers to wear over the booties, ropes, descenders, waterproof backpacks, lots of carabiners with webbing, etc etc. It’s the kind of activity that, unless you know someone with a lot of experience and/or equipment, you should do with a guide.

But don’t let this deter you! It is one of the coolest activities I’ve ever done. We rappelled tens of meters into pristine pools, slid down natural water slides, jumped off rocks into pools, swam under waterfalls, and waded through narrow canyons with moss-covered walls reaching high above us. My favorite was Garganta de las Gloces, and I found a video of some of the best parts of it. And this is another we did—Barranco del Furco—that shows some of the rappels.

One of the many reasons to love Lisboa

Tile-fronted old mansions, yellow trolleys, red roofs, cobble-stone streets, wrinkled old women peering out windows, colorful laundry blowing in the breeze from the Río Tejo, pastéis de nata aside, Lisboa rocks my world because you can hardly smoke anywhere indoors.

What a breath of fresh air.

Yes, in some bars in the Bairro Alto you can smoke, but in many you can’t. Smoking was prohibited in every restaurant we ate in. It was wonderful.

In this sense, the city is light years ahead of Madrid. In other comparisons, and with the experience of last year’s Semana Santa under my belt, I’d say that Portugal also betters Spain’s simple green salad (yes, that lettuce should be green, Spaniards) and bread, which is crustier and heartier in our western neighbor. I’ve found the Portuguese to be lovely people and, in my two short trips, I’ve even grown fond of their language, which sounds soft and whispery with the slightest hint of a more sing-songy Russian. I’ll certainly be back.

On Morocco

This is a long overdue post about our New Year’s trip to Morocco and some of my thoughts and impressions.

Why am I writing about Morocco in a blog about Spain? Basically because I believe that Spain and Morocco have a lot to do with each other. Because I would argue that, in an ideal world, more Spaniards would travel to Morocco, especially those who disdain the “moros.” To spend time in Morocco is to open your eyes and your mind to Africa, to Arabs (and Berbers), and to Islam. I found it to be a place that benefited me greatly in terms of cultural education.

Here’s a list of things that I noted about our week in Morocco.

1. There are people, everywhere at all hours. I don’t just mean in cities. I mean walking on the side of the highway, carting materials from one place to another, working or looking for work. Or just outside their houses. I remember my sister’s description of Nairobi as I tried to conjure up an image of it myself: “tons of people, all the time.” Where were they all going, she always wanted to know. Upon reflection, it seems to be an aspect of a developing country. The people are out and about because that’s where life is—not in the house in front of computers and television like in so much of the rest of the world.

2. I became enamored of the way people dressed. Many men wear a djellaba, a long, pointy-hooded cloak. At first it reminded me a bit of the KKK, but I soon changed my mind. Djellaba come in all sorts of colors and materials and seemed like the kind of thing that is totally comfortable and good for any season. I also found the Berber women’s dress in the villages we visited in the High Atlas very stylish in its own right. They wear all sorts of scarves in their hair, skirts, sweaters, and socks, that are wonderfully colorful.

3. One of the loveliest things I saw on the whole trip were the communal ovens of Xauen. We spent a day and a half wandering around this tranquil town in a perpetual downpour. But we didn’t mind: the entire medina is painted in an amazing celestial blue that makes you feel like you are walking through a fairy tale. And we’d frequently cross paths with people carrying loaves of bread covered with dish cloths on wooden boards. We wondered where they were all going until we finally saw one descend into a low doorway. We peeked in, and there was a man tending an oven, pulling out freshly baked loaves from the hearth and putting more in. It was almost certainly the nicest thing I saw on the whole trip.

4. The way vehicles move around the country is astounding. First you’ve got the trucks, which aren’t very long but are loaded about 50 feet high with stuff. Mind-boggling. But really the preferred form of transport is donkey—with or without a cart. On the side of any road you’ll see lots of people riding donkeys loaded with whatever goods they might be transporting: olives, oil, vegetables… In general, you’ve also got a good number of people who drive the latest BMWs, Mercedes, and what have you, and then everyone else, who drive 20-year old Renaults with horrible engine problems. There are also plenty of motorbikes and regular bicycles thrown into the mix.

5. The way drivers move around the country is, simply put, suicidal. We drove on many many two-lane roads. Moroccan drivers, especially taxis and big buses, like to play a game on these roads called “get out of my way or else.” We found that oncoming traffic rarely respected any sort of rules about overtaking, and frequently had to slow down in our direction for an overtaking driver in the other direction. It’s a wonder that there aren’t more accidents, but we decided that since everyone more or less drives in this chaotic manner, it sort of works itself out.

6. Our first morning in Morocco we found ourselves in a riad in the center of the medina in Marrakech. Imagine our surprise when, in the pitch black of 5 in the morning, we suddenly hear a very plaintive, and quite loud, wail. And it continued for a good 15 minutes or so. We quickly got accustomed to the prayer ritual and the way the town megaphone would crackle to life about five times a day

7. Seeing women in headscarves (and possibly more body-covering garments) becomes completely normal, as does seeing significantly more men than women everywhere. But women have their presence, especially at the markets.

A week is not a very long time in the end, and I think when we left I sort of felt like I was finally just getting used to the way everything worked. I’ll just have to go back.

La vida rural

One of the things I love most about Spain is that in many places there’s still a strong connection to the land, the seasons, and doing things the old-fashioned way. When my sister planned a trip here for the puente de la Constitución, I knew that she, as someone interested in agriculture, would appreciate seeing that part of Spain. So mi chico and I set out to look for a casa rural (cottage) to rent for the holiday weekend that would fit the bill.

We ended up in Pastores, a tiny village in Salamanca province, in one of the nicest places I’ve ever stayed. The stone cottage, “La Fragua” (the forge), felt like a place right out of a fairy tale. I won’t tell you much more, except that I highly recommend it. You could honestly spend your whole weekend in the house, cooking, reading in the lofted “library,” watching movies, sitting in front of the fire, taking baths… But it’s worth it to get outside for a bit, too.

The cottage was about 10 minutes away on a winding, two-lane road from the lovely, walled Ciudad Rodrigo. The town has a really authentic, low-key feel to it and a truly great plaza mayor. There’s also the requisite castle (now a parador) and cathedral, made of sandstone, just like the one in Salamanca, which is only 45 minutes away.

In town we bought some amazing jamón ibérico de bellota, from pigs raised on a farm right next to town, as well as local cheeses from the market, including a delicious cured goat’s cheese. This is one of the best things to do in these towns in western Spain–aside from livestock watching (my favorite roadside attraction is the black piggies rooting around in the meadows, followed closely by any bull under an encina that looks remotely like Ferdinand).

One afternoon we continued south from Pastores towards Robledillo de Gata, where we’d heard there was an olive oil museum. We first climbed to a mountain pass and then descended, on a road with more curves and drops than I’d like to remember, into the valley where Robledillo sits, nestled into the hillside. The museum is run by two brothers who gave us a thorough explanation of how olives were pressed in times past (production stopped in 1976). The press was hydraulic, powered by the little river that runs through town.

This is my finest memory of the trip: walking through the village at dusk, admiring the houses constructed with whatever materials were available (mostly slate or stone), smelling the woodsmoke wafting through the air, and hearing the river flowing steadily along its course.

Click on any of the markers on the map to see more information about the area.

The worthwhile Algarve

Portugal is not España, but we share the peninsula with her. And it was about the only place on the peninsula that didn’t receive rain during this year’s Semana Santa. The Easter holidays were a real washout for those who had gone to Spanish coast to lie on the beach or to Sevilla to watch the processions.

Alex and I spent the long weekend meandering through the (rainless!) Algarve, the southern coast of Portugal (map), in search of the less-beaten path through the region. We fell in love with some places and others made us cringe and get in the car and keep driving. The area is popular with good reason, but, as we found, there’s a lot more to see beyond the big overdeveloped and tourist-ridden cities like Faro, Albufeira, and Lagos.

So, if you, like us, prefer to experience a more authentic Algarve and find secluded beaches and so forth, I have two main recommendations.

1. Just east of Faro you’ll find the largest fishing port in the Algarve. It’s called Olhão and it’s not a prettified place. It’s real and gritty, and full of Portuguese who make their living fishing in the Atlantic Ocean. There are two pensão in town, and the very helpful owner of ours gave us the ferry schedule to the islands just off the coast of Olhão. The ferry cost about 3 euros round trip, and was filled with Portuguese heading home to the island with their dogs and shopping bags.
We spent an idyllic afternoon on the Ilha da Culatra, where the fishing community is alive and well, sidewalks are the only streets, and the beaches are pristine. Having not eaten lunch, we headed for the first restaurant we saw after getting off the ferry. The waitress there didn’t speak English or German, and there was no menu. She asked, in Portuguese, if we wanted fish or meat (how could we even think of eating meat on this island?)–I chose tuna and Alex swordfish. She brought out an appetizer of some of the most delicious steamed clams I’d ever eaten (above). The fish was grilled with green peppers and onion and very tasty. She also brought out a fresh green salad and crusty bread. We washed it all down with cerveja Sagres, which is remarkably good. She charged us 20 euros for everything.
We then wandered out to the beach, which we had to ourselves. After sitting in the sun for a while, we set off down the beach for Farol, another cluster of houses at the other end of the island, where we’d be getting the ferry back to Olhão. Farol, home to a lighthouse, was just as charming, but clearly more of a weekend house-type place, without the fishing business of Culatra.In Farol, the ferry unloaded what seemed like hordes of people, equipped with food and supplies for Easter weekend on the island, and we boarded the noticeably lighter ferry to ride back to Olhão, the setting sun and a trail of seagulls behind us.
2. Go west! After Olhão, the farther west you can get, the better. The highway ends, the hillsides covered with high rises cease, and there is generally more vegetation and fewer people as you head towards Sagres, the closest town to Cabo de São Vicente, or the southwestern most point in Europe. The coastline between the two places, about six kilometers long, is composed of stunningly high cliffs and the waves that batter them. The landscape is fantastic. A highly recommended beach is Praia da Beliche, about halfway between Sagres and the Cape, full of surfers and people enjoying its beautiful, wind-protected cove (below).We stayed in Salema, on a recommendation from a friend who had been and described it as “two streets with one hippie bar.” When the highway ends soon after Lagos, you must take a national road to get any further. Salema is off this two-lane road: you drive several curvy kilometers towards the coast until the road ends and you’re in Salema, which sits right on the beach. It’s a tiny little town that’s getting bigger thanks to construction of apartments up the hillside opposite the town proper. But it’s not spoiled (yet) and there are so many fewer people than at other spots, that even if everyone is English or German, it just doesn’t matter because the beach is so lovely and it’s so peaceful.

Alex and I went to the Algarve with no reservations anywhere. We found a place to stay by wandering Salema’s only street until a sign offering an apartment for rental caught my eye. We ended up renting a room in a two-bedroom apartment with a terrace, a well-equipped kitchen, and spacious living room for only 35 euros a night. (The man rents the place in August for significantly more.)We spent our last day in the Algarve in our own little cove in Salema, shielded by rocks on either side, until the tide got high enough that we knew it was time to leave.

Almanzor

I spent last weekend in a beautiful snowy place just two hours from Madrid: the Sierra de Gredos. A friend invited me on an expedition to Almanzor, the highest peak in the Sistema Central, or the chain of mountains that crosses the Iberian peninsula from Lisboa to Valencia. Almanzor is 2592 meters tall, or 8501 feet, and my friend had been wanting to climb it for some time.

I knew nothing about the peak before he mentioned the trip, and I read a bit about it in the links he included in his emails. But for whatever reason, I didn’t fully digest the information. When, on our first day out, we arrived at Los Barrerones, a flat spot high above the Circo de Gredos (the Gredos Cirque), and my companions pointed out Almanzor — an amazingly beautiful peak, a rocky horn rising from the cirque — I thought, “How the hell are we going to get up that?”

It looked, for all means and purposes, like the Matterhorn. You know, one of those breathtakingly high peaks that you can’t even fathom how people climb. Much less you.

None of this is to say I am inexperienced in the mountains. I have spent plenty of time in the hills but, above all, climbing the 4,000 footers of the Adirondacks and completing long circuit hikes, like the Alps Haute Route and a circuit of the Torres del Paine in Chile. Ascending peaks in the winter is very different, especially when you have to use an ice ax and crampons and the vertical drops are enough to make your stomach flip.

We got a bit of a late start on Saturday morning from the Plataforma de Gredos, the parking lot that gives good access to the area. The original idea had been to walk to the refugio (about two and a half hours), drop off our heavier material (sleeping bags, extra clothes, etc.) and then continue up to the summit of Almanzor (another couple hours) before descending to a hot meal and bed at the refugio.

We arrived at the refugio sometime around three o’clock. After eating something and getting our gear ready to ascend, it was nearly four. Dinner would be served at eight. On the advice of several people sitting outside the refugio we decided to postpone our summit attempt to Sunday morning. We’d start early, the snow would still be hard, and we’d be well-rested. So we spent Saturday afternoon heading up the trail to Almanzor to practice with our crampons and ice axes.

But on Sunday the group was ready to give up: one member had awoken with a sore throat and another’s boots were completely soaked through. I couldn’t help thinking that it would be a real shame to not even give it a try. So I said that. The sore throater said he had no problem waiting several hours for us, so the remaining three departed uphill, over the snow-covered rocks, under a cerulean blue sky.

The landscape of this area is just fantastic. The refugio is situated at the southeastern end of the Laguna Grande, a beautiful lake (above) surrounded by the peaks of the cirque. It had been snowing the week before, so everything was covered in snow. But since the sun was shining all weekend, the snow got soft during the day and hundreds of little streams began running. One of the benefits of going in the winter is that there’s tons of water–and the sounds of it–everywhere. There are several waterfalls en route to the summit. In summer, apparently, it’s a bit of a rocky wasteland with not a drop of water in sight (except for what’s in the lake) and quite hot.

Shortly we were far beyond where we’d reached the previous afternoon, moving slowly and making sure that with each step the crampons and ice ax were in place. The trail just keep getting steeper and if I looked back, I started to fear the way down. One of my companions had commented on Saturday that she thought we had gotten quite far in our practice session. This was an illusion–it’s not much distance to the summit (a kilometer or two) but, from the refugio, you have to climb nearly 600 meters up in that distance.

Pretty soon we could see the Portilla del Crampón, the tiny pass one has to cross to reach the last pull to the summit. But there were still a hundred meters or more to that point. The vertical drop was making me really nervous, and I decided I’d had enough. Luckily, there was someone coming down and he didn’t mind at all having a little company on his descent. He calmed my nerves quite a bit and admitted that the mountain “está empinado” (is steep). The descent wasn’t nearly as harrowing as I imagined.

An hour after I returned to the refugio, the two who had headed on to the summit returned. They hadn’t summited, in part because one had lost feeling in his feet and also because they would have needed a rope to do the last bit. By the time we made it back to the car, we were exhausted and sunburned, but totally happy.

We’ll be back for you, Almanzor.

I’m published!

Somehow, the piece I wrote on Extremadura a year ago caught a travel editor’s attention nearly a year later. Here it is.

Tale of a bus

I have never been so happy to return to Madrid as I was this morning at 7.

I left the country this weekend–bussed it up to Bordeaux to see some friends. And almost didn’t make it back.

I never intended to blog about this trip–it being to France and all. But the Spaniards managed to screw things up in another country.

The gist is this: a group of five (including me) got left behind in Bordeaux on Sunday night when our bus never showed up at the stop. I couldn’t understand it: my ticket clearly said that the departure point for the bus at 22.15 hours Sunday was the exact place we waited in vain for two hours.

Turned out that the bus, which arrives from Paris, had gone to another stop in Bordeaux. The stop changed three weeks earlier due to works in the area around the old stop.

(A note: some of us think that Madrid is always en obras, but Bordeaux makes Madrid look good. Granted, they’re putting in a new tram line, but wow. At left see just a glimpse of the works and rain that is Bordeaux.)

Regardless, Alsa, the Spanish bus company, neglected to advise us of the change in stops. Indeed, in their Madrid offices they didn’t even know the stop had changed, which explains why my ticket said what it did. Perhaps the fault of the drivers?

What boggles my mind is that on Sunday night the bus may have picked up some passengers better informed than my posse and me, but they were missing FIVE, which is no small number! Wouldn’t it have crossed their minds to at least check at the old stop?

At any rate, my newfound friends and I finally boarded the bus to Madrid last night, a day late. The trip was uneventful except for 1.30 a.m. at the Spanish border, when the Basque police boarded to check our passports and promptly removed two people who we could only assume didn’t have the sufficient papers to enter España.

But we arrived safe and sound. I went straight to the Alsa office in the bus station (what luck that it opens at 7!) and was received by an extremely nice woman who handed me complaint forms to fill out and assured me that the higher-ups will get back to me within twenty days, with what I hope will be willingness to reimburse me for their neglect.