Jeff: Malaga and onwards

Day 1 in Malaga was mainly taken up by a few chores. Firstly and most importantly was laundry which involved a 10 minute bike ride into the centre loaded up with clothes. We took the time to grab some breakfast (Acai Bowls) which have become our new favourite breakfast option – with a Croissant of course. We also needed to pick up some trainers Rich brought online which were down the road from the laundrette. We realised at this point that with the new shoes and the washing which needed to hang dry we were going to struggle to get everything back so whilst the rest of our clothes were tumble drying we decided to cycle back to the van, drop everything off, cycle back to the laundrette and then back to the van. 45 minutes worth of cycling which could have been avoided if we parked at the laundrette! (We live and learn). Being the hot and humid mess we now were we decided to drive over to the nearest beach to cool down before heading to a camper stop out of town which was a huge parking lot which used to be an old quarry. It seemed a popular little spot and had a nice circular route for us to run around next morning. Our morning run was not lonely, we had constructions workers moving rubble and council workers strimming bushes but they seemed undeterred.

We drove back to Malaga to explore but not before stopping at IKEA! Jeff needed some more accessories and Ikea didn’t disappoint although Rich was not impressed to find a piece missing to the washing up liquid holder which involved him having to maze his way back through the whole store a 2nd time to find a replacement and then try and explain in broken Spanish what the issue was. Mission accomplished we got back to Malaga. After hitting the local market we cycled over to the Soho area where we found an amazing restaurant and proceeded to order 3 courses! We were then tempted by the Picasso museum however after a couple of hours of exploring the town, seeing the roman amphitheatre and Cathedral, we decided after seeing the long queue to enter, we were better of calling it a day. We now have headed to Antequera where we have parked up at a popular camper spot next to a castle. Tomorrow we head to Lobo park to see the wolves!

Mornings have been getting lazier in Spain as the sun sleeps in then so do we. Long gone are the 6am starts so after a lazy morning we finally got moving towards the wolf park. Rich had visited this same park 11 years prior but was keen to go again. The park has various different packs totalling around 30 wolves in total of all different species. Naturally shy, it was explained to us by the guide that the owner of the park socialises with the 1st generation of wolves in any given pack and then the offspring tend to feel at ease around people without any need for direct socialising. The wolves at the park are generally donated by zoo’s all around the world but they do struggle to get young wolves donated which they can breed off. On top of the wolves the park also had some goats, pigs and foxes which were all rescued. It seemed like a good place all in all and a great way to learn about wolf behaviour in a semi natural environment. After the tour we made our way to our next excursion – El Caminio which is going to be a 4 hour hike across rope bridges and cliff edges (Catherines Idea!)

The El Caminio del Ray hike was actually the most dangerous hike in the world a few years ago but has since had £5million spent on it to make it safe. So we actually had to get up early the next morning as in order to do the trek you either need to be organised and book several months in advance (which we are not) or turn up on the day and try and get tickets. There are only around 50 tickets available and I had read that people start queuing from 7.30 so it made sense that we need to be there around that time. We got up at 6 and drove to the park and then got ourselves ready and headed down the 30 minute walk to the starting point. The first part of the walk is through a dark tunnel (using our phone for light) and we walked all the way through it when I remembered I hadn’t bought my purse so we decided to run back and get it (as it was still early enough and we couldn’t see anyone else around) and then again walked through the tunnel but this time they had turned the light on so it was a little less scary. Once through the tunnel we continued on to the gate which was a nice walk but it was still very dark. Once there we got comfortable and waiting for the gate to open. We were the only ones there for about 20 minutes until the next couple came and then there was a slow increase of people until the gates opened at 9. They then split the queue into those organised people and the unorganised people and we reckon there was about 30 people in the no tickets queue behind us. We managed to get straight on the walk as well which was good and so we picked up our helmets and lovely hair nets, listened to the safety briefing and started the walk through the gorge. The walk uses boardwalks which hug the gorge sides at different levels and require you to go up and down stairs and gives great views which include views of the paths used in the old hike and you can see why it was soo dangerous. There was also a section of the walk through the forest where we saw a wild Ibex (like a goat). We completed the walk in about an hour and a half and the we got the shuttle bus back to Jeff and headed off to a new town called Olvera which is a mountain top town with a castle and church at the top and a flow down the hill of white houses, We walked to the top of the hill and explored the square before going into the castle which included some great views, some very scary spiral stairs which were barely big enough for my feet, some old artwork and a coffin to (presumably) show what some of the rooms were for. We will be spending the night in the town before heading out a little to do a long cycle tomorrow, wish me luck!

As we didn’t need to start early we had a bit of a lie in then drove to the start of the long cycle down the Via Verde which is a 36km trail from Olvera to Puerto Serrano and is all tracks with no road cycling. Rich loaded up my bike with food, water and a lock and off we set down the route. We quickly (well Rich did) figured out that the route was all down hill but not enough down hill to help that much but you knew would hinder on the way back. The route took us through some farms and valleys with 30 tunnels to go through and 2 viaducts to go over. Once we got to Puerto Serrano we had a bit of a break and some food before the long uphill cycle back. We were a lot slower on the way back and I think the speed at which had attacked the first leg came back to bite him a little. He had been gung-ho on doing 100km cycle but once we got back to the van at 72km we agreed it was enough for both of us and so we had some lunch and tea and decided to drive on west. We had planned to get to an Aire where we could service and drive to another place to sleep but once we got to the Aire in Algodonales we realised it was nice and quiet which is all we wanted. There were about 20 vans here from all over Europe including the UK so it seemed the place to be. We also realised neither of us could be bothered to cook and there were some restaurants in the town so after a nice long shower and rest we headed up to the town and found a tapas place where we had a large dinner of various vegan tapas and a 3 large beers between us which came to less than 30 euros.

Today is Sunday so once we got up this morning we did toy with the idea of going to Seville today and spending some time there tomorrow but we decided that (having learnt our lesson from other places) that most things will be closed so we shall spend the day in this town and catch up on things like the blog (there is free wifi – its not great but it does the job), cleaning and sorting out the van before heading to Seville early tomorrow morning where we have lots planned!