Via de la Plata from Salobreña to Los Guajares – Day 1 – and camels in Almeria

Via de la Plata from Salobreña to Los Guajares – Day 1 – and camels in Almeria

After a slight change of plan, I set out this morning from Salobreña on the coast, and began walking toward Granada – then on to Santiago de Compostela.

I was to have done this in the summer – but my job didn’t last, due to a few visa issues (I’m good at those), and so I’m walking earlier than expected.

Which I’m rather thrilled about.

The weather is perfect – trees blossoming, birds singing.  The sun shines but doesn’t blaze down, and there are few tourists anywhere.  It is the perfect time.

I set off from the coast this morning and headed out along the river.  It is a peaceful route if you stay off the road, and the landscape is dramatic – all craggy cliffs and gnarled trees growing out from the rock.  After about fifteen kilometres there is a left hand turn onto a GR minor road, and that winds up around the mountains until it reaches the three villages of Los Guajares.

I’m staying in the middle one, Guajares Faraguit, since it is on my way to the next village.  There is no official accommodation here, but the genial bar owner made a call to a niece of his, who lets part of her house to weekenders, and here I am – complete with hot shower and internet.  Not much to complain about at all, particularly after the sensational three course meal at the bar – for a whole eight euros.  I do love this country when it comes to food.

The route for tomorrow is a bit more rugged, but all the better for looking at – the country around here is just so stunning.  I love the smells of oranges growing, and the background chorus of birdsong.

I’m not accustomed to blogging regularly, but I thought I might give it my best along this route, since there isn’t so much on the net about walking to Santiago from the costa tropical.

Certainly it isn’t serviced for peregrinos, though if you put in the time to contact the various walking groups I’ve no doubt accommodation would be offered along the way – there are many CSJ members in the region.  I was a little hasty to get moving, so will be winging it.  Just for a change.

I’m going to upload a post I wrote prior to leaving, since I meant to do it on Saturday and didn’t quite get around to it…

ALMERIA CAMELS

 

Last weekend, after I discovered I was unemployed, I went out to the ‘mini desert’ around Almeria to meet up with a fellow cameleer.  Ursula is a far more experienced camel woman than I ever hope to be.  A qualified vet who previously worked with camels in the Grand Canaries, she has also visited the desert of Mauritania, Algeria and Morocco, and understands exactly the kind of world I lived in for so long.

Her camels are amazing – beautiful, healthy specimens the likes of which would send a Mauritanian nomad into worlds of delight.  She runs treks into the surrounding terrain, and has a tourist camel farm in the village.

They say that within Spain can be found every landscape of the world, and that

within Almeria can be found all of Spain.  I suspect they may be right.  A more dramatic, searing landscape I’ve rarely seen, and it was hard to believe I was still in Europe.  I’m obviously not the first – Sergio Leone shot many of his Paella Westerns here, and the amusement park

with his original sets are still standing proof.

Which is probably why I kept expecting a dusty cowboy wielding a six shooter to pop out around every corner.  Sadly, he never materialised.

Ursula drove me around to many of the area’s fascinating archeological sites.  One in particular I found extraordinary – and any mistakes in the following details are my own.

The remains are of a Moorish settlement, but they date back to an Iberian one, which actually co-existed with the Moors from across the valley for some time.  These Moors, however, were not linked to the Taifa states of Al Andalus.  They were a separate sect who had come from Damascus, Sufis who sought a peaceful existence in which to practice their tranquil brand of Islam, and the village was an independent state.  Their quality of life was extraordinarily good; the remains show a sewerage system, with every house having its own toilet; excellent irrigation that flowed through the settlement; and a diet including olive oil, wine, grain, oranges (the bitter variety) and plenty of meat and vegetables.  It was in fact a veritable paradise, where the available water supply was wisely used to create verdant crops.  It seems amazing that although those same resources exist today exactly as they did then, we are now confronted with a barren wasteland rather than the rich valley it once was.

We drove further up into the mountains and stopped at a thermal spring.  I watched Ursula’s sister queue up to fill her bottles with the hot, clear mineral water that poured out into an ancient stone trough, and wondered for how many centuries people have come to replenish their water supply with the liquid gold cascading from the rocky cliff face.

It is this sense of timelessness that I treasure here.  In Australia it is the ancient geological formations of the landscape that I love.  I don’t think any Australian

overseas can ignore the odd pang of homesickness for the vast spaces and majestic isolation of their home.  But here it is the sense of continuity that captivates me, a stark and dramatic landscape not at all unlike that of home, that has nonetheless been cultivated and settled for so long it boggles the mind.

My father told me once that when he was a child, they taught in school that humans had only been on the planet for 10,000 years.  I’ve actually met religious bible purists who genuinely believe that humanity sprang into being 6000 years ago (and these guys were sober).  But recently in Spain they made discoveries that confirm human habitation of earth going back over a million – and counting.  Can you imagine that?  In the space of one lifetime, our understanding of life on our planet has changed so dramatically as to be a fairy tale if those same historians sixty years ago could hear it.  I wonder what other treasures lie beneath the earth, and what mysteries they will in time unveil.

In the meantime I think of the priceless gift of being able to walk through this landscape for the next couple of months, absorbing every fascinating detail that so many others have seen before me, and I feel thrilled and excited to have the chance.  I’d hoped to completely revamp my website before setting off, but – well.  As you can see, that didn’t happen!  I guess I will always be more interested in poking around in another pile of rocks than I am in doing my own housework.  Which anyone who has ever lived with me can undoubtedly testify.

The next one will come from Granada, I think, where – can you believe it – I will get to spend a night in my own flat before continuing on.  It seems positively indecent to stop in the middle of a walk and sleep in one’s own bed.  Man, I’m going to enjoy it.

Cheers.