Monda

We love Guaro and our compact little house here! Guaro is only a short distance away from Monda, but it seems like a totally different world. The street plan is like a maze. I don’t think anything meets at right angles, very typical of a village established during Muslim times. In fact, I think our house is on what would be called an adarve - a narrow dead end lane characteristic of traditional Muslim urbanism (not the castle walkway type of adarve). It allows access to the houses in the center of a block, buildings that would otherwise not have any street access. (Think of trying to access the hole in the center of a donut. ) I read about this term last year when I was translating a book about villages in the Sierra Nevada area, but this is the first time that I’ve ever seen one. Our adarve is unusual in that it dead ends in the center of the block with a set of stairs leading to the innermost house. The lane is so narrow that when we left our door shutters open at lunchtime, we could hear the conversation from the house across the street where their door shutters were also open while they were having lunch. It’s quite a nice, cozy situation and encourages neighborliness. When we headed out to the market, our neighbor was doing the same and welcomed us to the street.

The GR 243 connects Monda and Guaro, so we had originally planned to walk here, but ended up taking the bus because of river crossings that are still too high. We are hoping to be able to walk that route later in the week. Today we explored the town on a route that highlights the medieval character of Guaro. I thought that I recorded our route on Wikiloc as usual, but when we got back, I realized I must have pressed “explore” rather than “record”. But you can see the route on the National Park website below.

www.sierranieves.com/descargas/callejeros/calle…Read more