A Place Both Wonderful and Strange – Tash & Ricki's Career Break Travels

No, not that kind of high. We’ve been spoiled with some seriously good views lately, and this post is about a couple of them.

As I feared though, I’m starting to fall behind on my blog posts. The irony of seeing and doing lots of blog-worthy things is that I have less time to write them all up! 

A week ago now, we made a visit to Málaga’s Gibralfaro Castle. In what is becoming worryingly typical of my style of sightseeing, I didn’t look it up in advance. As a result, my expectations of it were a little off the mark. I was imagining a full castle experience, interior and exterior, when it is only the structure that remains in place. This despite being able to see Gibralfaro from our balcony, and also having already been in close quarters when we visited the Alcazaba (fortress) a couple of weeks ago.

Málaga Alcazaba

Both have made for lovely weekend wanders as they are free to enter on a Sunday afternoon.

Gibralfaro Castle

As is typical of a castle and fortress, both are located up a hill. Combined with some sunny weather, this gave us great views over Málaga. Despite our best efforts we weren’t able to spot our apartment so might need to make a return trip!

The walk up to Gibralfaro acted as a mini-warm up for what was to come.

On Wednesday, we made our return to El Chorro, the small town we had passed through returning from El Caminito del Rey. Surely it takes the crown for most Spanish sounding name! Ricki must have sweet treats on the brain at the moment though, as he has been referring to it as El Churro. That would definitely be a town worth exploring! 

Anyway, the plus side of having ended up on the guided tour of El Caminito, was that the guide had pointed out Pico Huma to us. We hadn’t heard of it before but it is the tallest peak in the Málaga region. I had, half jokingly, mentioned we could come back and do it as a hike, and here we were. 

We started on a forest trail, where pretty quickly we started to hear the echoing calls of mountain climbers. As we had seen when passing through El Caminito, the area is incredibly popular with climbers . I’m not taking that as a hint though! Soon enough we were crossing paths with them. I was quite unsure how to respond when one, clocking we were English speakers, stopped us to ask “do you know where we are?”. I can only assume he mistook us for fellow climbers and was trying to locate a particular climbing route; not that he had suffered a serious fall and was dealing with amnesia (fear not, I’m pretty sure we saw him at the station later, safe and well).

Not long after traversing the “Arab steps” we reached a large clearing.

I have to admit, we were starting to feel a bit cocky at this point. Compared to the expected total time of 5-6 hours, we seemed to be making great progress. Of course, the hard work was still to come. With the sun starting to reach its peak, we were hitting the most intense part of the hike, where it became a lot more rocky. 

The bigger the steps became, the more I felt the fatigue of my workout the day prior. I’ve never given much thought to my hips when hiking, but my time on the adductor machine did not do me any favours. Or, you know, approaching my mid 30s! Soon every distance marker we reached felt like an accomplishment.

To add insult to injury, I was amazed when a couple of men, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere behind us, started to run as soon as we stood aside to let them pass. Show offs! They were almost as agile as the elusive mountain goats we had managed to spot.

We persevered to the summit, and at least our slower pace meant we had it to ourselves by the time we reached it! 

After lunch with a view, we knew we couldn’t hang around too long as we had a return train to catch. It was time to make the reverse journey, and of course the descent puts different demands on the body. I am definitely starting to understand the appeal of walking poles.

As we headed downward, we passed another couple of guys, this time joined by a collie, terrier… and daschund. And there was me thinking I had it tough! I didn’t notice, but could only hope there was an emergency papoose at the ready. For the dachshund, not me. Ricki isn’t quite ready in his weight training for that!

To put the height we were at into context, it was pretty bemusing to notice El Caminito del Rey below us.

Indeed we were even at points above the griffin vultures that had been soaring above us in the gorge. It was great to be able to see their aerial acrobatics from much close quarters.

Thankfully we made up time with the descent, clocking in at 4 h 30 mins if excluding our lunch break. This even left us with some time to chill with a much earned beer at the train station cafe. 

The hike had been challenging but very worthwhile. For one, it was good training for later in the year. But also as one of the heavier going walks I’ve been on, it was important to get an awareness of how my body (and mind) would take it. I had intentionally (I swear!) not checked the total altitude before we set off, as I didn’t want to psyche myself out. It was an incredible sense of achievement to find out that at an elevation of 1,186m, I had scaled my first munro-height peak. So I am all set to start bagging once we are settled back in the UK.

I have to say though, the four flights of stairs up to our rental apartment when we got back had never felt so intimidating!