Tijola: Cortijo Los Correas

Luckily for us, we were able to get a taxi this morning because six days worth of groceries weighs a lot! We are now ensconced in the middle of 600 olive trees here at Cortijo Los Correas. When we step out of the house, the only noise we hear is birdsong. It’s an ideal spot for exploring the deep barrancos of three major rivers that drain down from the Sierra Nevada: the Ríos Trevélez, Poqueria, and Guadalfeo.

After helping us get settled in, the owner’s son needed to get back to working with his dad. Today they are burning the trimmings they have pruned from the olive trees so that they won’t grow too high. He has an interesting backstory: he lives here and helps his dad on the cortijo for half the year; the other half he works in Zurich because “it’s too hot here during the summer!”

We walked all around the cortijo this afternoon. There are more than just olive trees. One terrace is planted with avocado trees, and interspersed with the olives are oranges trees, lemon trees, and kiwi vines attached to wires that form a trellis. They grow like grapes.

The biggest event of the day was getting a new stovetop installed in our house. We had mentioned to Angela that two of the burners seemed stuck , but it was no problem to us. She and her husband came down to take a look, and an hour later, voila, here came the repairman with a new stovetop. It gave us a chance to talk with them and learn about the difficulties of simultaneously running a cortijo and three casas rurales.Read more