El Burgo, May 08+09

The plan was to stay in El Burgo an extra day in order to do a River Walk, then hike to Ronda tomorrow.  But I decided not to walk to Ronda because the elevation and descent look like this:

 

and because of the other usual reasons that go into "difficult."  Guy has it as a seven hour +  stage, but the bulletin board in town claims it takes eight hours and twenty minutes, and the cardiac demand is 4/5.  I decided to walk the route until it got to the steep uphill part, and come back.  In other words, an out-and-back.  This first section is not terribly interesting, but it is along a broad track, not too demanding, and, with an extra stretch added on, the hike was about twelve miles.  

Although I never listened to podcasts or books while I walk "walks"  as opposed to, say, training, when one is on track that requires no attention, and is somewhat boring, the desire for diversion manifests itself, so I went to the audiobook  Don't Sleep, There are Snakes, which I was excited to begin only to get a message that there had been something amiss with the purchase.  Bummer.  Podcasts were not an option because there was no cell reception, so I listened to more of Typee until I could stand not one more minute of it. 

There were pretty flowers along the sides of the track:

There are two bar-restaurants in El Burgo.  I ate at the more popular one yesterday; I think I did not order "the right thing," which must be something other than dry, tasteless morsels of chicken, which advertised themselves as kebabs, only they were not. Today I went to the classier establishment.  Salmon, a definite improvement, but salt and pepper, the addition of which would have improved the dish considerably, seem not to be a staple of Spanish Cuisine and never appear on the table.  Later on, a Magnum purchased from the local Gasolinera and an agua con gas (seltzer), acquired from yet another bar, made a dessert that hit the spot!

The River Walk, more accurately, Up-in-the-Hills-above-the River, was to be today's sport before taxi-ing off to Ronda with Rojita.  So off I set at sun up only to—guess what—not find the path.  This was VERY annoying, partly my fault, partly Guy's terrible instructions, and partly the limitation of navigational devices. In reverse order:  navigational devices don't help that much if you are on a track parallel to the track you should be on, especially if they are close. I won't even go into the stupid instructions, OK, just one part: they never said to cross the river near the start of the walk, and my error was not realizing that I should have been on the other side of the river.  After fuming, I decided to take the path I was on—on the don't-cross-the- river-side because it was pretty, and indeed, the walk ended up being one of the most gorgeous I have done so far; the photos do not do it justice because they do not take in the views:

Field

Stream:

The only unfortunate part was that I had to turn back before I desired in order to make sure I was back in time for the taxi.  Also, I wanted to see if I had thought through the error I had made at the beginning. I had, and found where I should have gone.  But for sure the intended walk would not have been lovelier than the unplanned excursion.