Raptors overhead!

Blue sky this morning revealed masses of raptors circling overhead. Maybe they have been there all along and we just have not seen them because of the persistent clouds. Ned estimates we could see as many as a hundred at a time. We’ve seen raptors in lots of places in Andalucia, but never this many at once. It was truly a stunning sight.

This afternoon was a repositioning trip by bus to the eastern side of the new Parque Nacional Sierra de las Nieves. In 2018, we hiked around the seventeen villages on the western side of the park, but we have never explored the area around the eleven villages on the eastern side. So that’s where we’ll be spending the next month. We will use the GR 243 to walk from village to village, and various local trails to explore the areas around each village. I found lots of tracks on Wikiloc, color-coded them, and transferred them to a master map on Gaia so we can see at a glance what our choices are. For the next eight days, we will be venturing out from our cozy house in the village of Monda.

We had originally planned to walk here using the GSDM, but three weeks of steady rain dashed that plan. The bus ride up into the mountains from Marbella was plenty exciting enough in its own right, though. To gain height, there were numerous 180° turns in the road, and the bus had to beep before entering each one to warn oncoming traffic that it was occupying both lanes. I was glad I couldn’t see over the edge. Quite an exciting trip! (And the restrooms in the Marbella bus station get a gold star for being the cleanest bus station bathrooms ever. 😊)Read more