A week ago, on Sunday, IES took us on a dayhike in la
Alpujarra, a nearby hilltop region.
(Note the name: in Spanish, most nouns that start with an
‘a’ are preceded by a masculine article when in the singular, even those which
end in an ‘a’ and which would otherwise be feminine, for example, “el águila” (the eagle)
instead of “la águila.” This is just done for easier pronunciation, because
saying the latter would run together with the double ‘a.’ But there are notable
exceptions to this rule, like “La Alhambra,” and here, “la
Alpujarra.” I haven’t heard the official explanation, but since these words
are derived from earlier Arabic names, I’m guessing that’s the reason—though I
don’t know why a word of Arabic origin would take the feminine article, especially since other Arabic-derived words like "el aljedrez" follow the rule.)
La Alpujarra is characterized by a series of tiny,
blindingly-whitewashed village/towns built on the edges of cliffs in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada
mountains. It’s a rugged country, very rural and weathered-feeling, the kind of
place that’s desolately beautiful but also makes you feel that life there is lived
subject to the elements.
We took a bus up a narrow, very curvy road, the mountain on
one side and sweeping, dizzying sheer drops on our other, to the little pueblo
of Pamponeira that was our starting point. There was an icy mountain wind
blowing and when the clouds parted we could see the entirely-snowy cap of el Pico Veleta, the highest peak in the Sierra Nevadas, the only crag looming above us
because we were already at the top of the lower mountains.
Our guide who briefed us initially told us that 25% of
Spain’s plant diversity was found here, in this tiny mountain region, and
nowhere else in the country. There wasn’t much visible vegetation, actually:
mainly low-lying scrub and chaparral with occasional trees, but for the most
part what few landmarks there were were very exposed. We were in a
valley-chasm, with a string of three white pueblos (village-towns) at the top of one of the
walls, the river at the bottom, and nothing on the other side but a blank
mountain stretch, dramatic under the uniform gray sky.
We self-divided into two groups, for an “easy” or a “hard”
hiking route. The hard hiking route, as might have been predictable, was not
actually hard, except for a few small muddy bits (my shoes! Well, I got caught
in a huge downpour yesterday and now they are squeaky clean, so that worked out
well) and the last twenty minutes, which were straight uphill. We hiked down to
the bottom of the valley, crossed the river, hiked partway up the other
side, and then hiked up to finish at a different pueblo (called something like
Bobillón?).
The hike was about two hours long, if I remember correctly,
wending through the valley and offering neverending views of the little white
pueblos poised on their perches. The lighting was strange, with a pearly gray
sky that would sometimes be lit up from within surreally. There were several
small waterfalls snaking down the valley walls and we passed several shacks,
most of them abandoned, assumedly where shepherds had lived. We did however see
a few shepherds still at it with their herds of what were either sheep or goats
(who of course ran nimbly down incredibly steep hills without a second
thought), tending a smoky fire. We also saw a few stocky ponies and mules left
to graze at the subalpine stubble.
From Bobillón we walked back to Pamponeira, had a little
free time for a drink and a tapa (there’s always
a little extra time for those—such windows are built into any Spanish
schedule), and then went back home.
Back in Granada in the evening, I went out for dinner with
my friend Franchesca (there’s no food in the residencia on Sundays). But in
sharp contrast to the overwhelming deluge of people on the streets the night
before, Sunday night Granada was a ghost town. There was no one out and
everywhere was closed. Although it had always seemed like every other shop on the street
was a tapas bar when I’d pass them during the day on my way to elsewhere, of
course, now, when I was finally looking for one, I couldn’t find any. We walked
in circles that kept ending in stores battened down with metal gratings over
their shopfronts.
We did, however, get to one place that Franchesca had been
before. It was a little tea place in the lower reaches of the Albayzín called
Ali Baba. It was ultra-cozy, with red plush cushions everywhere in a recessed,
dimly-lit, cave-like arched room. Arabic, Hindi, and
Spanish-that-sounded-Arabic-or-Hindi music were playing at a reasonable volume,
and like almost all Spanish waiters, our waiter was pleasantly attentive when
we ordered but otherwise left us alone to ourselves in the room. We had chai
tea that Franchesca had had there before, served in a beautiful silver Arab
teapot. I’m not a big tea person, but it was absolutely delicious, milky and
sweet with a few cloves of some kind of spice sinking to the bottom of my
glass.
In Granada (unlike anywhere else in Spain) you also get a
free tapa with any drink, so we also got a small pizza to split. It wasn’t
enough food for dinner, but we couldn’t find any other acceptable places to eat
afterwards and by then it was well after 11 and I was ready for bed. A really
fun place—I’ll definitely go back sometime.
Switching gears to a completely separate anecdote, Tuesday I
went with Talia, a friend from my orientation-week Spanish class, on a
pilgrimage to el Sacromonte.
Sacromonte is a historic neighborhood close to, but higher up
than, the Albayzín. It’s somewhere I’d wanted to get to but hadn’t yet had the
chance; Talia felt similarly, and since we had to made a “creative project” to
finish off our orientation-week class, she had the idea that we could make a
video together about our trip (in the tradition of Spanish classes, dating back
to the beginning of time--always the final video project).
Sacromonte is known in particular for two things: caves
(cuevas) carved into the hillside as houses and the Gypsies who live there. Most
cuevas are uninhabited now, and seem to be more of a historical/publicity thing
for the neighborhood (every last tavern and hotel is called “cueva” this and
“cueva” that; there are museums about cuevas…), but not all. More on that a
little later.
Getting to Sacromonte was pretty easy, just a matter of
getting over and going up, up, up, through and then above the Albayzín. When we
“got there,” up high, it suddenly felt very rural and completely different
culturally. (A big shift: cats everywhere! Everywhere else in the city are
dogs.) The streets (just a patchwork of alleys, really) were very quiet and
mostly empty; there was a veritable forest of prickly pear cacti, a good half
of which were in bloom. Through an alley made entirely of random sheet metal,
rusted springs and pinned-up grass mats we came to the final hill, which had no
paths at all. It felt very isolated, dropping off at the end of the earth. It was a
surprise, then, to come to the top and see three cars parked out there on the
dirt. (How did they get up there?! It must be more accessible up the back
side.) We were treated to a view looking down on the Alhambra and the rest of
the city. It was so strange to see the red glow of traffic lights in the city
center, where we’d been just forty-five minutes before (and we’d been walking
slowly, really meandering, so had we been determined we could have gotten up in
probably twenty minutes), and here we were now in what felt like the most rural
of countrysides. To our left was a nice view of the Sierra Nevadas and the
lower, green foothills spreading out beyond the city limits; to our right was a
large, terracotta-colored stone-brick wall that cut the hill in half, apparently
separating Sacromonte from the Albayzín. I don’t know what purpose it served,
but we gave it a token touch.
Although we felt very much alone at the top of the hill,
we definitely weren’t. Amidst a loose assortment of abandoned junk (including a
suitcase filled with empty beer bottles and some scrap metal) were some
real-life, very-much-inhabited cuevas. They had yards, with potted plants, a
water tap, what looked like a chicken coop; we heard music coming out of one,
and a little bit below us some people stood out in front of theirs socializing—they
waved to us.
We had filmed a few segments along the way, and Talia had
taken pictures, and then we filmed a final segment from the top and then made
our way back down. (The toughest part: turning a blind eye to the legions of
glossy, well-fed and satisfied calico cats that were everywhere.) A fun jaunt,
and there are so many more places in and around the city still ripe for exploring. (Oh, and we ended
up editing our film—extremely shoddily, as neither of us knew more than the very basics
of iMovie—a few days later over sangría and tapas in a pub. That’s how you get a project done.)
Much love.
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