Pórtugos: Only 14 meters farther!

Yesterday’s walk into the mountains NW of Pórtugos was so successful that last night I used the ‘plan trail’ feature of Wikiloc to create a route NE of Pórtugos. The route didn’t really lead anywhere that could be named, but it was a loop walk on wide dirt tracks and seemed like an opportunity to perhaps run across some old cortijos or maybe even some animal life. Yesterday, on the way back from the waterfall, Marie and I had been startled by two deer (or maybe even ibex?) leaping across the track in front of us. We hoped we might see something similar today.

As it turned out, we didn’t see any animal life other than insects, lots of which were constantly flying around our faces, making us wish we had brought our bug nets. But we were very happy seeing some new plants, some old cortijos, a big line of bee boxes, and expansive views.

Just as we reached the highest point of today’s walk, the track we were on merged with one of the wide, dusty cortafuegos (firebreaks) that are common in these mountains. Aha, we thought, so that’s why there’s such a nice wide, well-graded track leading up to nowhere! It must allow firefighting equipment and personnel to reach this high area.

Shortly thereafter we found a large patch of shade under a pine tree, the perfect place to have a snack and then loop back down to Pórtugos. We had no idea until we got home and looked closely at the track we had taken on the Gaia app (where I compile a master map of all the tracks that I know of that are available in an area) that our snack spot was only 14 meters from where the track we were on joined the TransAndalus and the GR 7. It would have been so easy to walk up to them!

On the way down, we had excellent views of a new stretch of territory. The barranco of the Río Trevélez was very clear, and we could see a bit of snow on the mountains above the village of Trevélez. A few of the plastic greenhouses where vegetables are grown year round became visible - surprisingly, given the high elevation. We’ve been told on previous trips that they are growing tomatoes there. We could even see over to the site of the Conjuro Mines, a group of historic iron mines abandoned in 1974 - a spot to investigate on our next trip to the Alpujarra.Read more