GR 243 toward Istán

The village of Monda sits directly on the GR 243, the Gran Senda de la Sierra de las Nieves. We’ll be taking it north to the village of Guaro on Thursday of this coming week, so today we thought we might take a walk in the other direction, toward Istàn, to see what it was like.

There have been several reports on Wikiloc saying that the Río Seco is running too high to cross right now, and indeed, they were right. However, we did get to see the portion between here and the river. Again, there were excellent explanatory signs telling us, for example, that historically, the single track part between Mirador Cuesta de la Jambré and the river was too narrow to be used by carts or carriages. It could only be traversed by mules. With a sharp drop off on one side of the trail, we could see that was undoubtedly true!

Rain caught us on the way back, but our featherweight Montbell trekking umbrellas kept us dry. Ned has the extended version that covers his pack as well as him; mine is actually just a sun umbrella, but I find it works fine in the rain as long as there isn’t a lot of wind. Of the 22 days we’ve been in Spain, it has rained sometime during the day or night on 21 of them. That might be a record!

www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/monda-rio-seco-vi…Read more