A Short Walk in Andalucía
By: Hogang Tanka
Tags: Mountains, Andalucia, Hiking, Travel, Walking

Cazorla

Cazorla is a pretty, well-to-do, small town, its wealth accrued from the olive plantations to the south which extend far and away over the hills in an interminable desert of monoculture that characterises this part of Spain. It is the custom in this town is to eat out; not a seat is left unoccupied at the many restaurants around the main square, by appearances all local people. Tapas is pork this, pork that, and more pork. Prices at least half those of Ibiza. But they bring you a free tapa each time you order a drink, and not small either.

The Sierra

The mountain range to the north and west is the Sierra de Cazorla. Driving up into it the landscape changes slowly from arid, scrubby, burnt-yellow foothills into a high region of extraordinary lushness and variety of vegetation. The trees are oak, beech, birch, poplar, hawthorn, pine, and higher up, fir and larch. It is different from the other mountain ranges I am most familiar with, the Dolomites and the Julian Alps. There, there is a clear line between the deciduous tress below, and the conifers above. Here it is more mixed. But those other mountains are higher and cooler. What a contrast though from the sterile olive monoculture below!

The foothills

Diversity

More diversity means greater autonomy and sustainability as there are more checks and balances. Monocultures cannot exist without human intervention. Ibiza has relatively little diversity. That is a problem. It is why the introduction of snakes is a problem. They have few predators. Maybe genets, falcons, cats. But too few. Here there are snakes — we see three of different species — but also many creatures that would eat them, mainly large birds of prey. So they are controlled. There is a sustainable equilibrium when everything is eaten by something else!

Prohibitions, a Moral Dilemma, Man and Nature

My son Dylan and I are going into the sierra for five days and nights, exploring and camping out. But I haven’t taken account of the fact that this is a Parque Natural, a protected area. At the start of our trail we are confronted with a sign indicating all the prohibitions. No camping. No fishing. No walking off the trails. No doing the three things we have come to do.

No camping!

How does one justify a breaking law that a democratically elected government has made? This is a question of our time especially concerning COVID rules. I have myself stated in this context that one cannot just do what one likes if one wishes to live within society. So I am, conflicted. I have come to the wild because I want, for a short period, to experience the illusion of not being bound by societal rules. Yet here is a notice board telling me what I cannot do. I know we are going to break the rules, which makes my words and actions hypocritical. This causes me some unease. There is nothing little to say. It is what it is. I need to reflect upon it.

Apart from the moral aspect, I reflect that this is not actually a natural area, it is an area protected from humans (an integral part of nature), the very humans that are encouraged to come here because the area needs income from something other than olives. Humans are part of nature, but unfortunately we are many and destructive. I feel frustration that our numbers and destructiveness have made it necessary to sanitise our interaction with the natural world. No sleeping out. No wild walking. No fishing. I understand the need and (in theory at least) support the means, but still it saddens me.

Into the Wild

Dylan and I have a couple of vague goals. There is a river, the Guadalentín, and along the river is a path, the Senda de los Pescadores, which we aim to walk along. To our relief and delight it is actually flowing. All of the torrents we have passed on the drive up have been dry as old bones. The headwaters of the great Guadalquivir were just a meagre trickle. Anyway, the Guadalentín empties into an artificial lake, created by damming the valley, 13 or 14 km down river. This is a secondary goal.

The start

Setting off we walk down a gravel path for about an hour, cross a small stream on a narrow metal bridge, then gradually uphill on the gravel path, through surroundings alternating between woodland and grass meadowland, with mountain tops to the left and the river valley to the right. We pass one or two fenced properties with nice houses on the land between the track and the river valley. the gravel track goes on and on, and we are getting higher and higher above the river. It is very hot.

Which way?

This cannot be the Senda de los Pescadores. We have seen videos, and we should be walking close to the river. We turn back. There is a shack built by the side of the river valley (a gorge at this point), and it looks as though one could descend the side of the gorge to the river without too much difficulty. My idea is to stay here and sleep in the shack or pitch the tent, and get cooking water from the river. It is a nice spot.

Maybe we stop here

The river from above

Making friends Nº1

We walk down quite easily until about seven or eight metres above the river, but further descent proves impossible. Anyway, the shack door is locked. We walk back to the place were the gravel track parted from the river, and begin to walk along the narrow, overgrown trail along its bank to look for a camp site. Laden with heavy and bulky rucksacks and in the fading light, it is soon evident that this is an impossible task. There are no suitable places to put up a tent: no open spaces or flat places, and either very soft mud or hard rock.

We back-track again heading for a flat sandy place we’ve passed near the foot bridge. It’s not ideal: it’s too exposed to sight (we need to be hidden: remember? Camping is not allowed! We have passed several cars of the Guardia Forestal on the drive up, so we figure they a keep sharp eye on things.) and too low, meaning that if the predicted storms come, the river might rise over it. Luckily though we spot a nicely placed on an elevated knoll just above the river, hidden from view from below by a small cliff and from the hillside above by trees, well-shaded too by trees.

Camp set up

It proves to be an excellent site, and we do not move the tent from there throughout our trip. We decided against hiking onward day by day. From this place we could branch out. For a start, this was a perfect place to camp, something difficult to find in this terrain. Second, we are not here to pass through; I like to get to know a place, to absorb it and have it absorb some of me. Third, we are not here to get anywhere, or do anything really, but just to ‘be’. And fourth, this is about father and son ‘being’ together; doing stuff is a means, but in itself is secondary.

View from camp

Magical Encounters

On our first night, while going down the small incline to the river to get water for cooking, I suddenly become aware of a large animal approaching me. After that initial fight-or-flight moment, I recognise it as a young male deer. Extraordinarily the creature walks right up to me without fear and stands in front of me. It even lets me scratch its head. However, I am struck by the way it remains always alert. At any suspicious sound in the forest, its head is up, ears locking on the direction from which the noise came. A crashing in the undergrowth near the river and it is ready to run. Probably a wild boar suddenly frightened by our voices. It decides it is not a danger and immediately calms itself. We take photos. After this our friend is determined to get under our tarp, where we are cooking. We have to shoo it away repeatedly. Repulsed, it satisfies itself with standing on hind legs to reach the pine needles on the trees, and eventually wanders off into the forest.

Making friends Nº2

Supper is spaghetti carbonara reconstituted from dehydrated in a packet, cooked on a mini CampingGaz stove. Obviously in this climate and in mind of the fires that have affected Greece and Italy this summer, a fire is out of the question. The carbonara is OK but it is not carbonara. Anything tastes good when hungry in the open air after strenuous exercise. We have brought three packets of carbonara and three of spaghetti al parmigiano, plus two pot noodles, and in reserve a packet of straight spaghetti and a can of concentrated tomato paste.

Dinner over, we sit out in the dark watching the lightning show over the mountains as the storm skirts our spot. We only get a little rain ourselves. Then, after the storm, all of a sudden a fox appears not far from the tent, near the cliff and the hill going down to the river. It looks bigger than a normal fox, and completely white, but it is definitely a fox. It turns to look at us for a few seconds, then quite unhurried, turns away and vanishes down the hill. I cannot get over the colour. A trick of the light, no doubt, although there was no lightening just then, and no moon. Later on we catch sight of another fox in the same place, this time normal sized and red-brown, as they should be. Was the white fox the spirit of fox?

Dylan goes to sleep easily and doesn’t wake till well after dawn. I lie playing my harmonica and reading till midnight, and wake several times to reposition shoulders and hips. The night starts of warm but at this altitude cools quickly after midnight to below 15ºC, which feels cold to us. The song of the tumbling stream is our constant companion.

Stormy sky

Morning mountains

The Senda de los Pescadores

The Río Guadalentín does not flow over bare rock, its bed is muddy, fine mud or silt composed of earth from the mountainsides and animal droppings. By the footprints and other signs, I surmise there are large numbers of deer, wild boar and mountain goats of some kind or another. This means that we have to boil and filter this water before drinking it. So after breakfast on day two Dylan treks back to the car to pick up two 6L bottles of mineral water. He has to throw them into the bushes three times on his walk back as forest vehicles go past (we have to be careful; camping is not allowed, remember?!).

Muddy

Our watering hole

The Senda de los Pescadores is a trail down river that goes partly along the banks, crossing over at various points. There are blackberry bushes along the way that, along with trees and grassy reeds, crowd the path. They provide scratched limbs as well as delicious snacks full of Vitamin C and flavonoids and other good things to heal the scratches. In places where the river goes through high rock walls, narrow paved shelves were built long ago to serve as walkways. Pillars remain from of long-fallen bridges, which you have to leap across like stepping stones, or else climb down and make your way across on the rocks and stones, or even wading in the river.

Walkway

Bridge pillars

Things are not always what they seem

How to look ridiculous in one easy lesson

On day two, we walk down river as far as this trail will take us, then take a fortuitous wrong turn. I suddenly realise that while before we were following the direction of the current, now we are going against it: we have unwittingly come up tributary stream. But it has clear water running over rock, and there are waterfalls and deep pools to swim in. Going upstream here requires quite a lot of strenuous climbing up and over boulders as well as wading. There are a couple of great iron and wire barriers built right across the narrow gorge, obviously to prevent passage by bad people like us, but these defences were long ago penetrated and have fallen into disrepair and disuse. But in any case, we cannot get very far up this small gorge — things become too vertical — and we realise we are no longer following any established trail. So we swim, attempt to fish, and mess about till it is time to return to camp.

Swimming pool

Shower-cum-jacuzzi

On the hillsides there is an abundance of thyme, and along the river some kind of mint, as well as marjoram. In the late afternoon sunlight everything is delightful.

Delightful

Reflections on a Night Sky

Later on, after dinner and Dylan has retired to the tent, I sit under a clear night sky unpolluted by man-made light. Have you ever seen such a sky? It is an extraordinary blanket of glowing white light knitted from interminable layers of stars, many of which are not recognisable singly, but one over the other going back millions upon millions of light-years into the cosmos. And have you ever realised that what you are witnessing actually happened those millions of years ago? It has taken that long for its light to reach your eyes. You are seeing the prehistoric past unfold before your eyes. Maybe right now as I gaze at it in awe, there is another intelligent being a million light-years from here gazing up in similar wonder at its own night sky with its own strange planets and constellations.

Down River

Next day we try again. At the confluence, instead of turning up the tributary, we continue downstream along the main river, but things immediately become difficult. There seems to be no trail any more, so we have to make our own way, wading through the thick silt and mud on the river bed, clambering over large boulders, and such like. Our boots are strung around our necks, we have light neoprene rock-shoes on our feet. They continually fill with grit. We stub our toes and graze our shins and ankles on rocks. We remark that whenever we set out to do these things we know we will experience pain, but we come anyway. We laugh. Stubbed toes and grazed shins are nothing. And this is good. Good medicine in lots of ways that don’t come in a bottle.

Down river

It is hot and the sun beats down. I have bought a sun hat and put it on — I never wear hats. Dylan wraps his t-shirt around his head — he looks like one of the Taliban.

Taliban meets Crocodile Dundee

At a certain point we realise that there actually is a trail, subtly marked with little cairns of stones. We come to a gorge. The trail leads uphill, higher and higher and higher. We lose our way several times. We go down to the river again. Then up again. It is steep. We actually climb this high, steep mountainside twice. It comes out on the high grassy plain that the gravel track goes across that we walked along on the first day. From the contour lines on my map, I see that the gravel track cannot lead to the lake even though it goes in that direction; it winds slowly to ever higher altitude. So there must be a smaller trail down to the river again. We walk along by the top of the cliff for a while to see if we can pick up a trail again. The gorge looks impressive from above. But we cannot find a trail. It is rough terrain. It is hot and we are tired.

The sun beats down

Time for Lawrence of Arabia outfit

We sit under a group of oak trees and eat a late lunch: sardine and Emmental sandwiches. You should try them sometime. I wander over the grassy plane and up a rise through a wood to find the gravel track. I had put on my light camp/wading shoes and on the way a large thorn goes through and deep into the base of my big toe on the right. After a brief siesta (and a touch of light surgery), we make our way back to camp. All that afternoon and next day I am full of beans, no tiredness at all until late the next day after a very hard walk. I wonder why. The day before I had been tired and full of aches. I wonder whether it could be the thorn. You may laugh, but it went in very close to an important acupuncture point on the spleen channel. In Chinese medicine the spleen is responsible for the correct distribution of food energy. Bush acupuncture!

Through the Gorge

Day four. Determined to get down river as far as we can, we forge on, ignoring any attempt to follow a trail or go up and over. We actually manage to get through the gorge by following the river. After many bends through steep mountainside, and many small rapids and waterfalls, the landscape opens out into gentler topography and the river assumes a more sedate pace and placid temperament. Our legs are heavy, our feet ache, our muscles complain, and our energy is quickly fading. That is enough, the lake be damned, we made it through the gorge anyway.

Through the gorge

Cooling off is very necessary

I find that walking always stimulates reflection. Sometimes I feel sad. Our existence here is a momentary spark in the endless blackness. I am at a time of life when I see the years ahead are few and those behind many. Time is compacted, an increasingly precious commodity to be spent carefully. Because of circumstances of my own making, I have not witnessed much of this young man’s growing up, this one with me now. I must savour these moments. Don Juan advises me not to indulge in emotionality. I believe that to be good advice. Emotion should be felt and acknowledged, but not indulged in. And this walk is good.

This walk is good

The Pig

That night at half past three in the morning we here our pans and plates being licked and knocked about. There is rough snuffling around the tent. A wild boar. Something is dragged from our tarp across the ground in front of the tent. Our dilemma is whether it is best to make ourselves known, or to stay silent. Boars can be aggressive. Some food is inside the zipped-up outer flaps of the tent. We opt for silence, but we get ready to make a racket to frighten it off in case it tries to get in, and get our knives out just in case we need to defend ourselves. But it already has what it wants and snuffles off. In the morning I find the small rucksack I use for day walks halfway down the slope to the river. Some of its contents are strewn about. The pig has bitten a hole in the bottom and stolen a half packet of tortilla wraps, 100 g of Emmental, and quarter of a packet of dried apricots. A nice snack for a hungry pig.

I should not have left food outside in a rucksack overnight. Normally I am very careful about these things. We have often gone hiking/camping in the Julian Alps, were there are a few bears, migrated from Slovenia, and there I put any kind of food other than cans in a bag and sling it over a high branch strong enough to bear its weight but not that of a bear! But last night we were both extremely tired from our long walk, and I just didn’t think of it.

Reflections on Civilisation

Today is a day of rest, swimming, fishing, reflection. It is Saturday and quite a few hikers come along the path in twos or whole families, so we remain quiet and circumspect. Once upon a time when humankind was young, not a small pup but perhaps an adolescent, the forest was wild and spirits inhabited the waters, the trees, and even the mountains. These spirits spoke to the people and through them the people knew the forest. They knew to respect it because it could be fierce; they knew to value it because it could be generous; they knew they were part of it and it was part of them. In some places people still do; our people call those people primitive, uneducated, ignorant; our people steal their land and try to change them into more of us. Today, civilised trippers come into the forest on a sunny day, take some pictures of it, and go back to their civilised homes in their towns and cities; they will never really know or understand the forest and they do not want to. The spirits are silent to them now. Like us, they do not want to be seen or heard by these people. There is a barrier put up between them and the civilised people, like a black magic spell that cannot be broken.

Spirit of the waters

Guests for Dinner

On this trip we have seen abundant wildlife: eagles, vultures circling, deer, mountain goats, snakes… and foxes. In the evening a family invites itself to dinner. Mother appears first, standing seven or eight metres away, then sitting down. She wants to appear relaxed, but I know her mind by the subtle inclination of her head. She has her eye on our food, and is ready to make a dash for it whenever she can. She circles, disappearing then reappearing at different points around our tarp/kitchen, edging closer. Then she disappears for longer. We see her eyes bright as two small lights looking at us from the forest above. Then there are two pairs of eyes. Then three. She has two, maybe three adolescent offspring, learning the trade. She tells them what to do. I realise why they say foxes are cunning. Mother and pups in concert circle, probe, test our defences, edge closer. She can dish out harsh punishment if her pups err. And she defends her patch with vigour. At one point she viciously and effectively sees off an intruder. I sit still. Mother gradually gains the courage to come in very close. At my slightest movement she backs off, but steals back in again. She is now two metres away. She finds some titbits around our cooking pots. After a while she realises that this venture is costly but poorly rewarding, and all three/four go off to seek out more profitable labour elsewhere.

Fox family nosing around

Guest for dinner

And that is about all there is to tell, except to say that writing this ending now I become a little emotional because even a year ago I did not know whether I would ever be able to do these things that I love so much again. So with that foxy story, here it ends. Thank you for reading.

More Photos

Johnny Mantis

Me ‘n my next house

He’s smiling but the water ain’t warm!

Hello deer

Waterfall and pool

Gorge-ous

Earth, wind and fire

Post-Script

The way to the lake actually continues from the place we left off on day three. Having climbed up the steep trail to the top of the cliff/mountainside, where it opened out onto a grassy plane, we should have made our way to the gravel track and followed it for perhaps three kilometres, before looking for another trail down to the part of the river that empties into the lake. Should have paid more attention to that notice board that welcomed us with prohibitions! But our push through the gorge was more interesting I’m sure!