Béznar: fruit trees galore

Today was a relocation day. As we packed up, we ruthlessly eliminated anything we thought we wouldn’t be using for the next month. With high hopes that we would be able to mail this small pile home, we headed off to the closest correos. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any boxes of the right size, so all the items just went right back into our packs.

Next stop was the Día grocery store so that we could buy a week’s worth of food. There is no grocery store or even small tienda in the village where we are now staying.

The taxi driver who took us, our packs, and our four bags of groceries from Lanjaron to Béznar was full of information about the roadworks that are taking place between Lanjarón and the motorway that goes north to Granada and south to Motril. He says the use of bridges and tunnels will cut 3 km out of a 9 km route. Right now the construction machines look overpowering. There are huge cuts and scrapes all along the route. At one point there is only one lane of traffic. I am wondering if it will be hard to get through all of this on our return trip from Madrid to Orgiva.

We are now in a small, newly renovated house in the village of Beznar - about which we know absolutely nothing. Beznar is not in the Alpujarra so it was not inventoried by the ADR project that produced the fichas, nor does it appear in Donald Gray’s books. It’s in the Valle de Lecrin. We picked it as a place to stay this week because it is close to Lanjarón, it looked like there would be interesting walks leading out from the village, and we needed a place beyond the road construction so we’d be able to make our bus connections to Madrid next week to meet our daughter arriving from Boston. The two short walks we took this afternoon introduced us to the area. Plus, our house has a variation on the traditional aleros we discovered in Lanjarón yesterday! Under other circumstances, we would never have glanced up and noticed the eaves or known anything about their significance, so it was quite a nice coincidence to be able to use our new knowledge so quickly.Read more