Day 36. Sunday 13 April: Palm Sunday.

Our day would be a walk in God’s natural world…the Caminito del Rey, in the mountains behind Malaga. Before leaving Fisher home T had found a walk in canyons/cliff faces that might be an appropriate (scary) birthday thing to mark D’s 75th. However, Google research advised booking well in advance (we don’t do this) D comment: read ‘we’ as ‘T’. About 3 weeks ago T discovered that the walk was booked out, but after the Alhambra experience, when we learnt that multiple companies book tour blocks & then on-sell, the Caminito was re-visited. Lo & behold there were spots available on guided tours for this weekend & the weather forecast was pretty good for Sunday. So, D was informed of his birthday present & booking proceeded. All well & good but T became super anxious (the walk is 7.7 kms…a bit of a stretch for crap feet) pinned to canyon walls, steps up & down & the final bridge across the canyon is suspension! Weather prediction changed to damp. D was calm & keen. But  T went into panic mode at 0430 on Sunday: we’d taken the insurance option, so we had until midday to cancel & get a refund. 

The morning looked cloudy but forecast was benign & D was still positive. An hour’s drive to start point near Ardales. T still struggled…but then we were there! Took the shuttle bus to a drop off, then a 1.5 km walk to the entrance, then waiting to get our helmets, audio device, safety instructions… Hundreds of folk, all ages, shapes & sizes…It couldn’t be too difficult!!! Surely?

Helmet & radio device fitted, last toilet stop & we were away, with an English-speaking guide (could have been in Spanish, for all we could decipher a lot of the time). First 2 kms thru a tunnel, down trail & then the boardwalk started.

Pinned to the cliff, the boardwalk wound along the first canyon. Below the water surged (hydro for Malaga & beyond). Engineering par excellence. No words really for the magnificent mountain/canyon space we were in & T shed the anxiety. D walked ahead, designated photographer. The reality is that an iPhone doesn’t do justice to the scope and scale of the scenery.

Vultures (a delicacy in Malaga, according to the guide) soared above, there was one real mountain goat (T saw at least 50 other sorts, all with helmets). Guide pointed to this & that, mostly describing the previous dangerous walkway; but there was one plant (a wild onion) with a detailed explanation…’if you eat it, you’re dead but if you boil it for an hour & then sit on it, your hemorrhoids will be cured’. Very useful information.

And rather glad we weren’t on the old track. The guide told us that the kids from the Lima family, that lived at the start of the first canyon, walked five km each way on this track to and from school. There didn’t seem to be any evidence of handrails!

And then it was the big moment, the apprehension, the moment of truth: the suspension bridge!…’keep walking’ called the controller with the red helmet & so we did, hardly raising a bridge bounce!

The Caminito started as a hydro project & a train/tunnel access route through the mountains behind Malaga…now it’s still hydro & train and this huge tourist attraction. But it is also testament to some wonderful Spanish engineering feats.

And at the end, a welcome from a familiar, but quite common, scene.

It was a fitting birthday excursion…we can still do it! And that first beer was divine.

Dinner. Spinach ravioli topped with leek, tomato and chili salsa topped with asparagus and feta, with an oil dressed green salad.