Órgiva: Cortijo del Tocino

We might have seen the historic Cortijo del Tocino today… or we might not. But for sure, we saw a new part of the Rìo Guadalfeo.

The very detailed 1:10,000 map produced by Cartografía de Andalucia shows the historic cortijo exactly where we were. But the IGN map and OpenStreetMap show it in a different location about three km away and not reachable from the Orgiva side of the river. It’s hard to know which map is correct. Even the photo from the ADR office here in Orgiva was not helpful in identifying the cortijo because it’s taken from a distance and shows a number of different buildings.

In any case, we had a very informative walk because we were able to see a stretch of the Río Guadalfeo that is close to where it joins up with the Río Izbor coming down from Béznar (where we were last week). It was much more meaningful to see this after having crossed the presa at Béznar. There we looked down into the same wild area (El Salto de Lobo) that we walked to from the other end today.

We may be getting a better grip on the geography of this area, but we sure guessed wrong about how much the water level might have decreased in the Rio Chico since we were last in Órgiva two months ago. If anything, the level is even higher now than it was then! Absolutely no possibility of crossing it at the ford.Read more