Hiking Trip

Saturday morning I went for a hiking trip with a local club from Sevilla. Two of my American friends found this club on the web. They depart from the Sevilla Train Station every Saturday morning at 8:45 to a location to go hiking. The spot changes every week. This was the first time I had a chance to go. I met everyone at the Train station; there was a total of 33 people including me that were going on the hike. I would say the average age of the group was around 40. You could tell they were all close friends have known each other for while. We all got into cars and headed to about 10 miles south of Ronda, Spain.

Arriving at location

Our destination was a peak called. "El Conio" which was in Parque Natural Sierra de Las Nieves. We hopped some Fences and started up the rocky treeless mountains. It was a perfect day for a hike, nice and sunny with a little breeze. On the way they told us that we could see the Rif Mountains of Africa, which were about 60 miles southwest of where we were.

Getting ready to start the hike

First part of trail

 They trail consisted of steep inclines at times through very rocky terrain. The mountain had only small shrubs and grasses with no trees. We made our way up the first incline and then flattened out as we walked deeper into the park.

Headed down first incline

Once we got up into the first couple of hills everything because even more rocky. The boulders were bigger and stacked higher than before. We were making our way through a very difficult place to navigate. It also was hard to see other people in the distance due to the different levels of rock and the grey color.

Cutting across the hills

looking south towards Africa

Making our way to the resting point

Our end point was marked by a large rock formation with a small old pile of rusted metal and some wood connected together. It may have been an old hut to protect from the wind, but now it was nothing more that a mark to show you where we needed to go.

Hut is on the highest rock

Very cool rock formations

The Rif Mountain's of Africa are the tip above to clouds in the background

Pueblos in the Valley

At top

View from top, MUTE SOUND, very windy

We all ate at the top and hung out for about 45 minutes. Everyone was spread out drinking coffee from thermoses, passing foods around and drinking some wine. We all enjoyed the weather and views as we ate.

Hanging out at top

Reegis, Arley and I with someones legs, ha

We headed back down around 5 o'clock. The group all started off on the same path but somewhere down the mountain we were split up. People in both groups had GPS and a knowledge of where to go so there was no worry.

Lonely cows in the distance

As we made our way back down to the cars we got a great view of the mountains and saw a beautiful sunset. By the time we made it the the vehicals it was dark. Part of the group made it back about 20 minutes earlier.
We made sure everyone was accounted for and started back off towards Sevilla.

  

We all stopped in a small town on the way home to eat dinner. You could tell the group does this all the time and they loved it. It was really cool how nice everyone was as well. We ended up back in Sevilla around 11 PM. It was a very long day but worth it. I made my way home and got in bed to watch the playoff games before going to bed. 

Purple line it the route we took