It took 90 minutes to drive there and the scenery was gorgeous. I can't believe we live in such a beautiful part of the world.
David set his Wikiloc trail finder app and off we went.
About 15 minutes of walking through a forest then a clearing opened up to reveal the mountain range we were aiming for. After a few minutes gawping at it thinking, we're actually going up there??!!
we carried on. And on. And on. And up.......
I can't tell you how stunning the views were..just standing taking in the 'awesomeness' of them was amazing.
Alot (and I mean alot!) of the trails were nothing short of hair raising! The footpath was literally 3 feet wide - miss that and it would've been a drop to your death.
Scarey...very. But in a scarily good way. We sat at one point and just gazed at the snow topped Sierra Nevada..I never thought I'd be up high enough to sit and just look at it.
We were about an hour from the top, sitting down having a snack when, hurtling behind us came 3 cyclists!
We were like, how the hell did they cycle up here?! Obviously hard core fitness nuts.
So off we go again for the last leg of the climb. We thought we were nearly there but no! Up another mini mountain to go round the back of it and climb up and hurrah! The trail along the ridge of la Maroma was there!
The landscape took on a distinct feel of Star Wars' Tatooine.
The last hour was amazing..walking right along the top of the mountain ridge, with the constant vision of the 'death drop' on our left, and there it was in the distance. Our target. The rock tower. We quickened our pace (amazingly!
) and reached it. We'd made it!! We hugged! We couldn't believe we'd done it!
So there we were. It really did feel like we were on top of the world as we took in the 360 degree views. There were circles of stones made into pods that you could sit in.
An organised trip of 12 hikers (who'd overtaken us earlier) were all in a pod, laughing, eating and drinking Mojito.
They asked me to take a group photo and quickly reassured me the Mojito was very much watered down.
David and I took some photos and stayed up there for about half an hour. It felt odd leaving the place...after taking 5 hours and 25 minutes to get there you felt as if you should stay longer. But we'd seen all there was to see so headed back down again.
That was bloomin hard work! It was so steep we were sort of zig-zagging down sideways.
It took 3 hours 45 to get back to the car.
We only stopped once for a break as by this point our aim was to get to Paco's for a beer - this thought kept us going.
We stopped at a little shop to buy more food..the shop was so small (think hick town small
) but managed to rustle up mini crackers and cheese triangles. I fed them to David as he was driving along. It was 9.30 when we stumbled in to meet Don - normally I'd have gone home and showered, etc, but we were so thirsty we thought s*d it!
We had a few beers and went home. I had a shower as Don made us some food and then I went straight to bed. It was midnight. I'd been up since 6.45am.
So...a long day. A fabulous day. A day I will never forget.
I awoke this morning and as I went downstairs to open our front door I realised I'm not at all achey!
A bonus!
