La Alpujarra
This past Saturday, my program took us to hike La Alpujarra which is located in Granada and is a part of the Sierra Nevada mountains. This was my first hiking experience and I was pretty excited to try something new since Nick is such an outdoors junky. The bus ride there was as some people referred to it, the bus ride from hell. It was about an hour and a half bus ride, 30 minutes on the highway and an hour up a windy, curvy and very skinny road that led us to the mountain. It was so curvy that many people including myself felt extremely car sick. Unfortunately, some students actually got sick on the bus and some after. Others including myself made it there but had a stomach ache. Luckily, after a coffee and some water for hydration I was ready to hike! We started at the top of the mountain in Capileira and made our way down. In my opinion it seemed a bit dangerous although I am not expert hiker and didn't have real hiking boots, just my pumas. It was a very steep, wet, muddy and rocky way down. However the hike brought us through very old houses where people actually live and eventually to a waterfall. After seeing the waterfall, we then made our way back up the mountain to Bubión. I must say that I didn't enjoy the walk back up as much, very tiring! After a quick lunch break we made our way back down again to our final stop, Pampaneira. On our way to Pampaneira, half of our group got left behind and the tour guide didn't wait. We were lost in the mountain for a bit but managed to find our way to the small populated town of Pampaneira. Once there, we had around 2 hours to explore. There were so many stray cats and dogs walking around. We ended up finding a small chocolate factory with FREE SAMPLES! I definitely got my share of chocolate there. Although they had some very strange flavors such as chile, salt, pepper and many different fruits they also had my favorites: coconut, white chocolate, mocha and so much more. After leaving the chocolate factory and shopping around a bit we wanted to sit down and have a drink. We found this patio restaurant that has a beautiful view of the mountain. I ordered a sangria and I have to say it was the worst sangria I have ever had. It was so bitter and loaded with olive oil! A drink with olive oil, weird I know. I couldn't even drink it, yuck! But it was a perfect day with beautiful weather for a hike. Even though I have never been so sore and came home with a sunburn, it was a great first time experience.
This past Saturday, my program took us to hike La Alpujarra which is located in Granada and is a part of the Sierra Nevada mountains. This was my first hiking experience and I was pretty excited to try something new since Nick is such an outdoors junky. The bus ride there was as some people referred to it, the bus ride from hell. It was about an hour and a half bus ride, 30 minutes on the highway and an hour up a windy, curvy and very skinny road that led us to the mountain. It was so curvy that many people including myself felt extremely car sick. Unfortunately, some students actually got sick on the bus and some after. Others including myself made it there but had a stomach ache. Luckily, after a coffee and some water for hydration I was ready to hike! We started at the top of the mountain in Capileira and made our way down. In my opinion it seemed a bit dangerous although I am not expert hiker and didn't have real hiking boots, just my pumas. It was a very steep, wet, muddy and rocky way down. However the hike brought us through very old houses where people actually live and eventually to a waterfall. After seeing the waterfall, we then made our way back up the mountain to Bubión. I must say that I didn't enjoy the walk back up as much, very tiring! After a quick lunch break we made our way back down again to our final stop, Pampaneira. On our way to Pampaneira, half of our group got left behind and the tour guide didn't wait. We were lost in the mountain for a bit but managed to find our way to the small populated town of Pampaneira. Once there, we had around 2 hours to explore. There were so many stray cats and dogs walking around. We ended up finding a small chocolate factory with FREE SAMPLES! I definitely got my share of chocolate there. Although they had some very strange flavors such as chile, salt, pepper and many different fruits they also had my favorites: coconut, white chocolate, mocha and so much more. After leaving the chocolate factory and shopping around a bit we wanted to sit down and have a drink. We found this patio restaurant that has a beautiful view of the mountain. I ordered a sangria and I have to say it was the worst sangria I have ever had. It was so bitter and loaded with olive oil! A drink with olive oil, weird I know. I couldn't even drink it, yuck! But it was a perfect day with beautiful weather for a hike. Even though I have never been so sore and came home with a sunburn, it was a great first time experience. 
No comments:
Post a Comment