La Platera: La Laguna

We woke up this morning to drops of rain on the plants in the arbor, small puddles on the flagstones, and thick fog hiding the surrounding hills, but now, after a day of sunshine, everything is dried up again.

Earlier this week, while combing through maps and tracks along the southern shore of the sprawling Embalse del Tranco that lies just below us, I kept finding references to a small lagoon. Pedro also mentioned this yesterday, saying that it was a source of salt, and that nearby was a particularly beautiful era whose floor was made with stones of various colors. This all sounded very intriguing, so we set out to explore that area this morning as soon as the fog lifted. When we reached the next aldea, El Carrascal, a dog followed us out of the village. We tried our hardest to get him to turn around and go home, but he insisted on staying with us throughout the entire day. It’s a good thing we were making a loop trip, or he would have ended up very far from home and very thirsty. The road along the edge of the embalse gave us colorful views, not only of the water, but also of forest glades followed by old olive groves with trees with very thick trunks. We found the lagoon, but were so distracted by our worries about the dog that we forgot to look for the era with the colored stones. On the way home, we decided to take a route for which we had no GPX track, but the trail showed clearly on the IGN map of Spain. It’s always a bit worrisome not to have a track to follow, but after a few wrong turns, we made it to an overlook with tremendous views of the entire area and felt quite happy that our adventure had turned out so well. In addition, our canine friend is now back in his home village. Whew!

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