Los Cahorros

… where do I begin?...

I suppose I’ll begin with Saturday the 6^th of February. I went to Los Cahorros, the equivalent of a national park, on Saturday with my two friends Meta and Molly. All we had to do was to ask our respective host moms if they could make us bocadillos (sandwiches) to take with us, thereby letting them know that we were not going to be home for lunch, and catch the bus that goes between Granada and Monachil, a small pueblo (village) outside of Granada in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Sounds easy, right?

Well, when I arrived at the designated meeting spot early on Saturday morning, I noticed that Meta and Molly had excessively large lunches packed. This shouldn’t have surprised me, I suppose, since they have been talking about how much food their señora has been feeding them since their arrival last week. According to them, their señora feeds them well because they aren’t “chicas” (girls) anymore. They are “mujeres” (women), and they have to be well fed in order to bear children. Well, Meta and Molly proceeded to divulge the contents of their lunches. (Keep in mind that I thought my lunch, pictured here somewhere, was better than anything they could possibly have had.) They each had two foot-long sandwiches, an orange, an apple, an entire sleeve of cookies, and orange juice. Also, the cheese on their sandwiches was a half-inch thick slice of swiss cheese and one thin layer of bologna. There will be a climactic conclusion to this story sometime in the next 400 words.

Once we successfully got on bus line 183 GRANADA-MONACHIL, we thought we had it in the bag. However, people started to get off of the bus at different small villages along the way, which made us all more than a little nervous that we would miss our stop. Our incredible ignorance and naivety of the public transportation system was horribly evident that day. We ended up getting off of the bus one town too early – not realizing that “GRANADA-MONACHIL” obviously means that the very last stop will be Monachil – and we had to walk about 2.5 miles to get where should have gotten off of the bus and 2 more to get to the beginning of the park. (in the mountain scene pictured, we had lunch on top of the cliff jutting out in the center) The trek was well worth it when we got to the trailhead and before us were glorious rocky cliffs jutting out of the countryside. We promptly made our way to the first lookout and decided that on top of the cliff ahead would be a great place to have lunch.

On top of the cliff, there was a great view of the pueblo of Monachil and some other pueblos in the distance. We took our time, ate what we could of our bocadillos, and enjoyed the amazing 55 degree, sunny day.

For Meta and Molly, eating without the overbearing presence of their host mom was a very freeing experience, and Meta, unable to finish her lunch, took out her frustrations atop the cliff where she cast of her hansel-and-gretel-esque yoke and threw her sandwich to its watery grave. (the aforementioned action is depicted in a photo somewhere around here.)

After eating, we only had an hour before we needed to return to catch the bus back to Granada, so we followed the trail over a bridge and up the valley until we ran out of time. Needless to say, I was extremely exhausted when we got on the bus and tried to stay awake until we returned to Granada. I promptly went to bed and took a nice 2.5 hour nap (which is only slightly longer than the average nap here in Granada).