Gran Senda de Malaga

Our cottage is directly on stage 29 of the Gran Senda de Malaga. This 850 km footpath makes a loop around the province of Malaga. (www.gransendademalaga.es/en/ ) We’ve walked many of its stages before, and we intended to complete the ones in this area on this trip. The route is very well signed posted, and a new addition is that some of the sign posts also have an image for a QR reader that gives additional information about that particular spot. The app is called Senderismo Realidad Aumentada. We tried it out on our short walk between downpours today (first video) and got information about local birds, plants, and animals, as well as trail info.

There’s also a loop trail here that intersects the GSDM. We are hoping to walk it tomorrow. It will take us to a birds of prey viewing area, our main reason for this stopover. Today the weather service has put out an orange warning for rain, predicting up to 80 mm in 12 hours. The host of our cottage does a lot of walking around here, and she told us that the waterfall trail we had hoped to walk today was slick and dangerous from all the recent rain.

While out on our walk yesterday, we saw our first pine processionary caterpillars of this trip (second video). While these look endearing and we have whiled away many minutes watching trains of as many as one hundred caterpillars marching along head-to-tail, their bristles are poisonous and should be avoided. They are particularly dangerous to dogs. If they sniff them and the bristles get in their tongues and noses, it can cause an allergic reaction that leads to death. So now we keep a careful distance!Read more