Cañar: higher than we imagined

We have traded our casa rural in Tíjola where we were happily surrounded by olive trees and birdsong and total solitude for a casa rural that is quite a contrast. We are now at the edge of a small village (pop. 366) at an altitude of 1014 m (3327 ft), much higher than before, with a view over Órgiva and the Río Guadalfeo where we’ve been walking the last two weeks. They look tiny!

It’s always great when you have high expectations for a place and then you get there and it exceeds your hopes. Nothing could have prepared us for this view! We had seen photos taken from here, and had looked up at the village every day from down below, but the camera can’t capture the reality of being on the edge of a sheer mountainside. One noticeable effect is that the satellite that informs Google Maps where we are can’t tell what street we are actually on as we walk around the village because the vertical distance between streets is great while the horizontal distance is negligible. Our blue dot is usually in the wrong place. First village where we’ve ever seen this happen.

We took a taxi up because again we had to transport a lot of groceries. Good thing; this would have been a daunting climb for me with a full pack.

We’ve had a main goal for each of the places we have stayed so far. In Orgiva, we wanted to get the ADR information. In Tijola, we wanted to be able to see El Valero. What has brought us to Cañar? The MEMOLA Project. Cañar is the heart of this multi-pronged effort to restore the water system used by the Moors. In the last 12 years, community members and volunteers have revived more than 80 km of high mountain acequias. We hope to see some of these grand acequias during our five days here. For a rousing view of the project, see this short video (in Spanish with English subtitles) that inspired us to come to Cañar: https://memolaproject.eu/node/381Read more