Orcera: Three atalayas

Saying we wandered around in stony olive groves under a hot sun looking at old crumbling towers doesn’t sound anywhere near as inspiring as it actually was. There are three Muslim watchtowers from the 12th century near Orcera (built atop Carthaginian ruins from the 3rd century B.C.), with no defined path to any except the last one. We wound our way through the groves, trying to guess the best route to the first one, and suddenly, there it was - stones from over a thousand years ago that we could reach out and touch in a landscape little different from how it would have looked then.

The olive trees themselves are of great interest close-up. Right now, the branches in full sunshine have clusters of tiny yellow and white flowers opening up, while those in the shade are still green buds. Interestingly, a mature tree will have some 500,000 flowers, of which only 1-2% will become fruit. That’s still a lot of olives!

Today’s Wikiloc track:
https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/orcera-tr…Read more