HERE I GO....AGAIN

Literally, I´m trying this blog thing out again. We´ll see if it works.

After nearly three weeks of travel in Portugal & Morocco I finally started the walk from Gibraltar. I arrived to spend a full day on The Rock beforehand and am grateful for it. I had no idea. Did you know there are more roads INSIDE the Rock than on the outside? The day was lovely and though low clouds prevented seeing Africa across the Straits the sun was warm, the trails precarious and empty, the views incredible and the Barbary Apes a little too well fed from the tourists.
I left the next morning. The time had changed that night so when I got up to walk out to the Punta De Europa\Gibraltar it was still dark. But from there I headed back to get some breakfast & my bag and then waited until it officially became my bday somewhere in the world. That place would be Kiribati, the first country to greet the new day. That way I could still say I started on my bday.
I´m glad I left on Easter Sunday. Things were quiet. No one was at work. I slipped thru Gibraltar and into Spain and got out of the all the urban environs with relative ease. Had I waited until Monday morning I would have had a wretched bday for sure.
It was grey day & drizzly during parts of the day but it was a good start. The walking was mostly flat. By day two and from then on it´s been mostly mountains. And lovely mountains I might add. The climbing was a bit hard at first and my knee was thinking once or twice about this undertaking but it´s all been good since.
I picked my routes thru smaller places on what seem to be smaller roads. So far I´ve picked well. Even the locals have helped out by giving me a dirt track or secondary road that are not on my map and these have all proven to be quite nice. I´ve gone thru Jimena, Gaucin, Atajate, Cuevas, Ronda (not very small), El Chorro, Villanueva De La Concepcion, Ventas De Zafarraya and all the way thru to Granada where I arrived yesterday. The places I´ve walked thru are like some of the best images from our American West only there seem to be more mountains all around. El Chorro was a surprise! It was like walking into a new Zion Ntl Park (except coming out the opposite end of this wonderful place put me in front of an electro hydro dam). The sunsets and rainbows have had me rubbing my eyes. I´ve had rain, sun, gusts, fog and some very chilly mornings. But spring is in the air. The birds are a chorus of sound, every imaginable blooming plant is showing it´s best colors. It´s vivid. Electric.
I have eaten some great meals in little towns. In Gaucin I had my bday meal of fish on a patio on the side of a mountain looking out to the mountains receding below & into the southern coastal waters of Spain. In the very distance sat Gibraltar. The Rock could be seen from that vantage point.
I´ve been gifted by strangers and the angels are guiding me along the way. In one town, a simple yet powerful act of kindness has changed my life forever and for the better. I have been moved sometimes beyond words. Though I cannot speak Spanish too well I say enough to get by and understand as much.
This first week has me trained pretty well now. I realize I've had to be extra kind to myself when starting because my body has remembered what it´s about to go through. It wants to resist so I´ve had to coax it a little, pamper it some and make some deals. So far, at 20 to 25 miles a day I can manage. One day I did 30 but that seemed to push it. As long as I do 20 I´m ok. I want to take time to enjoy the scenery.
One place I passed through was Alhama De Granada where I walked a medeival path inside a canyon that the Virgen was supposed to bless those that passed. It was a beautiful trail so I shedded my pack at a cafe for an hour to cross through.
This morning I visted the Alhambra. It is a series of palaces built upon a hilltop overlooking the city. The first was built in the 1300s. The whole complex is stunning and so many times I´d look out and swear I was looking at something from a page torn out of a fairytale book. It was a perfect place to stop and see one of the creme de la creme spots in Spain. Thank you Juan for urging me to come here. It was worth making the stop.
But I´m off tomorrow, back on the road. I´ll hit some small places east and north and make my way onwards. I dread the reality of possibly needing to walk the motorway for a number of miles to connect the dots. But maybe some road not on my map will reveal itself.

I´ll post when I can but be patient. Internet isn´t in the small villages.