A Short Journey Through Andalusia: Call of the wild

October 31, 2009

I decided to spend a day on my own in the hills and valleys. It would be my manly adventure. Leaving the hostal I jutted my chin forward, set my mouth in a tough guy expression, narrowed my eyes and set forth up the almost impossibly steep incline of the village street, working my way between the whitewashed houses, up to the path below the castle and down into the valley below.
Not that I covered a lot of ground - with no-one waiting impatiently for me to compose my photographs I just snapped away at everything - under-exposing here, over-exposing there, zooming in and out, experimenting with every possible permutation of F-stop, speed and ISO, - As a result I probably hiked no more than a couple of kilometres in total.

Cut along the left bank of the Hozgarganta River here is the the water channel that was used to provide water to the Royal Artillery Factory, built in 1777, for the manufacture of cannonballs and bombs. I hopped and leaped and balanced with deliberate carelessness along the narrow edge of the deep and now dry channel. This small adventure piqued my hunger, so I fussed around trying to choose a suitable place to eat my lunch.

I climbed about 10 metres up into the rocks off to the path on the left, from where I could look out over the river to the hillside beyond. I sat on a small crag and ate slices of red pepper, carrots and fennel and chewed on chunky wholemeal bread and cheese sandwiches. I watched a procession of ochre-coloured cattle plod their way out of the trees on the hillside high up above the river on the other bank, moving up along a narrow path and beyond into a field in the distance. The sun silhouetted their shapes, and a farmer followed up from the rear, walking in a casual, slow and relaxed way, calling up ahead for them to move on. It was like watching a cheap version of Rawhide in slow motion.

But it was quite hot, and now the sun was starting to fry me slowly. There would be a price to pay. Towards early evening I began to relax into the calm of the present moment, stretched out on a rock in the shade by the river and took a a bite of the sandwich I had been looking forward to, and quite frankly deserved. I anticipated how I would frame the next few photos to take best advantage of the evening light that almost by default makes even our worst shots memorable.

And then I began to drift off as I lay there on the rock ...hearing the call of the wild ... getting sleepier ....

And suddenly a call on my mobile startled me out of a daydream. It was my wife, pointing out that this would be our last opportunity to watch the sunset from the castle, and that I had about ten minutes to meet her there. In an instant I dumped the unhurried, laid-back persona that just isn't me anyway, and switched back into frantic mode. I stuffed partly eaten food and camera into my backpack, abandoned all the photo opportunities that I had been waiting for and made a mad dash up the side of the hill up to the castle. It totally and utterly knackered me, and my legs were to suffer for days.

However, I did interrupt the painful climb to take a photo that seems to illustrate the easy-going manner in which horses, donkeys, asses and mules are integrated into the lives of the villagers, and I thought it was kind of the family not to chase me away for being too nosey.

I found my wife waiting along the ramparts of the castle, but had to ignore her for a while as the sun was setting fast and I wanted to photograph as much as possible of the surrounding landscape in the evening light.

Looking down on the village from the castle in the fading light we could see the town square where children were playing, and pick out the sun beds on the top terrace of the hostal. Slowly we realised, with some satisfaction I suppose, that we were able to identify so many of the buildings with small adventures we had had on this trip and on past trips - places where we had met interesting and friendly people and streets where we had got lost driving so often. It all looks so easy from here. But it isn't.