Órgiva: Wild rivers!

It’s hard to believe we can have so many spectacular days! The reason we came back to Órgiva a second time was to give Marie a chance to see the remote, wild setting of El Valero, the home of author Chris Stewart. She just recently re-read all three of his books describing his life here. Since this was Ned’s and my second walk out that way, we didn’t expect to see anything new today. But as it turned out, we saw all sorts of new things, and kept asking each other, “How did we miss that on our first walk?”

We followed the GR 142, the senda medieval, walking about twice as far as we went the first time. We came to a point just opposite El Valero where we had a good view of the house and the out-buildings as well as the garden and the road. Stewart describes the construction of all of these in the chapters of his books, so we had many details stored in our memory to add to what we could see with our eyes. The bridge that he constructed across the Río Trevélez to be able to take his daughter to school in Orgiva was not visible at all today. We are assuming it was washed away by the torrential rains in February. We were not the only ones looking for it today. A group of motorcyclists came by loaded with tents and camping gear, but they could find no way to cross. Nor could the walkers who came down on the other side of the river, hoping to cross to the Orgiva side.

Just as exciting, we had our first view of the spot called Junta de los Ríos where the Río Trevélez coming from the north meets the Guadalfeo coming from the east. The combined waters then flow south and eventually turn west to flow under the Puente de Los Siete Ojos and form the Embalse de Rules. Whew! What a lot of geography we have seen in our eight weeks here.

Numerous pomegranate bushes caught our attention with their bright red fruits. We were able to solve the confusion that their shape caused us when we first saw them a few days ago. Today it was very clear that the small red tubular buds open up into flowers. But it turns out there are two kinds of flowers on each plant: male (numerous) and female (rare). Only the pollinated female flowers turn into the fruit that we associate with the word pomegranate. Female flowers have a bell-shaped base, while male flowers are narrow and fall off shortly after blooming.

Now we are back and the fiesta is continuing directly below our windows. Last night‘s fiesta de la Cruz ended at 1 AM, so I am guessing today’s May Day celebration will also end at 1 AM.Read more