Las Alpujarras

Hello readers! I was going to wait until I had pictures before posting about last weekend’s trip to Las Alpujarras, but my friends are being remiss in posting them to Facebook so I’m just going to go ahead. Maybe later if they put up pictures I’ll put a few on my blog, we’ll see how it goes. Anyhow, so last weekend I went with my group of friends plus a bunch of Illini to hike in the mountains in an area called the Alpujarras. The trip started out as usual with a bus ride early in the morning arriving at the starting point for our hiking trip at about 10:30. We took a little time to eat our bocadillos and figure out who was going to take a backpack to carry our picnic stuff. Not many people were volunteering, so I decided to volunteer. How hard of a hike could it be, after all? Don’t I walk up the mountain twice a week? Shouldn’t I be in pretty good shape from all the walking I do every day? Sure, I’ll take my backpack! So, I took out all the unnecessary things from my backpack (clothes etc.), filled it up with picnic stuff, sweatshirts and water bottles, and slung it over my shoulder with gusto feeling pretty good about it all. Then we all lined up and started following our guide up and out of the town to get to the hiking trails. I found out within 10 minutes that I was not actually the strong beast of burden that I thought I would be. Apparently all those newly defined leg muscles mean nothing. Anyhow, I was huffing and puffing something bad before we even got out of the town! The added weight of my backpack didn’t help, in case you were wondering. We proceeded to hike. The scenery was beautiful, unfortunately I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I would have liked to because if I didn’t watch where I was walking there was a pretty good chance I would slip on a loose rock and fall off the edge of the path to a gruesome death on the rocks below. Needless to say, I watched where I was going. It just meant I only got to look around me and enjoy the views when we stopped to take a breather which didn’t happen as often as we would have liked since our guide was this tiny little hiking machine. She does guided tours of the mountains as her job. Yes, that means she walks these trails a TON every week and so doesn’t even break a sweat after hours of hiking uphill. Us poor Americans, on the other hand, were dying. The first day we hiked up through two different little towns, crossed a gorgeous gorge where we stopped to have our picnic, and then walked down along the river and back to the place we started. I really, really wanted to get into the river and turn over a couple rocks, but I had to keep in mind the plunging to a gruesome death thing, so I stayed on the path like a good girl. I did, however, have a chance to turn over a rock or two when we crossed over little creeks and found a lovely little stonefly on my first try. I guess the water in the mountains is pretty clean, go figure! There wasn’t a whole lot of time or energy for talking while hiking, but while having a conversation about all the movies that our friend D. has not seen (lots!), we did manage to find out from our program director that he is a big fan of “The Last of the Mohicans” which led to a rousing rendition of humming, whistling and la-la-laing the soundtrack. It also led to us being able to borrow the movie from our program director; hopefully we’ll be having a movie night on Sunday. Hooray! Eventually we got back to the hostel where we were staying and had several hours of free time before dinner. I took a nice hot shower and left the water on the whole time since I didn’t have to worry about wasting my Señora’s water like I do at home. It was wonderful. Then I plopped on my bed and stayed there chilling until dinner. My friend T. was teaching D. how to belly dance which was amusing. Then J. brought out her IPod and we listened to songs from the 90s while reminiscing about 7th and 8th grade. It was great fun. Eventually we went down to have dinner with everyone. Dinner was amazing. We had a choice of salad or several different kinds of soups first and then we had our pick of rabbit, swordfish steak, steak, lamb chops, bass or trout. Within my group of friends, we all picked out something different so that we could all try each other’s. I think the swordfish was the best, followed by the bass, then steak, then rabbit, then lamb. We were sitting with our program director M. who split a rabbit with D. He told us that the brain was the best part as he started digging around in the rabbit’s head (yes, head was still there) and eventually came out with a little gray blob which he ate with relish. It was funny and revolting at the same time. When I tried the rabbit, I had a bit of leg meat, nothing too unusual. D. on the other hand got very excited about taking the rabbit apart and finding the lungs, heart, kidney etc. to try. She was very disappointed that M. had the brain of their split rabbit, but she found someone else who’d ordered rabbit and for some reason didn’t want the brain, and so got to taste it. By the way, when I say that M. and D. split a rabbit, I mean take a bunny, have it face you, and then take a cleaver and split it right down the middle. Then go ahead and cook it. I’m glad I didn’t order the rabbit. Oh, and the salad was amazing by the way. Then for dessert we did the same thing and each got something different. I ordered “Nueces con miel y nata” which was a cup full of walnuts floating in whipped cream and drizzled with honey. It was lovely. I also tried some flan, walnut ice cream, tiramisu, some other kind of ice cream thing and then this dulce they make for Semana Santa. I can’t remember its name, but it was voted the best of the desserts. My Señora had made it for me a couple times for breakfast during Semana Santa, but I have to admit the one that M. got at the restaurant was better. Don’t tell my Señora I said that though, ok? During dinner and dessert I heard horror stories of college roommates which made me extremely thankful that I lived with a wonderful family instead of with some college girl with no sense of common courtesy or respect. The next morning we got up, had breakfast and then stumbled out for another day of hiking but this time with muscles sore from the day before. This time I did not volunteer to take my backpack and it’s a good thing since the second day was absolutely brutal for the first two hours. By brutal I mean we climbed up and up and up with barely any stops. I wish I had pictures now to show you just how high up we went. Again, guide lady just pranced along without stopping while the rest of us were stumbling and panting our way after her. Eventually though we got to the top and the view was amazing. Then after that the hike was easier and more leisurely so we could enjoy the scenery more. D. had a close brush with death though. We stopped to look at a procession of caterpillars crossing the trail and our guide was explaining that they were a big problem in the Alpujarras because they killed pine trees. Unfortunately, they’re really cute and fuzzy little caterpillars and D. was just about to pet the leader of the procession when our guide shouted “NOOOO!!!” and apparently saved D. from death since she explained that if you touch the caterpillars you will have a terrible reaction that can only be taken care of in a hospital and if D. had touched it, there was no way there would have been enough time to get her to a hospital since we were on foot in the mountains and the nearest hospital was in Granada. So, if you ever get the chance to go hiking in the Alpujarras and see a train of caterpillars, don’t touch. So we hiked all afternoon again through even prettier scenery than the day before (in my opinion at least) and eventually ended up back on the bus to Granada. All in all, it was a great time, but a week later I’m still a little sore from all the unaccustomed walking up in the mountains. I have learned that the walk to the University is nothing compared to a real mountain, it puts things in perspective.