Cabo de Gata = LOVE

Cabo de Gata is truly unique. Every time I go there, I find myself even more impressed than the time before. This Monday, since we had a holiday, Jenny, Brenna, Brenna's roommate, 3 French girls that are also auxiliares de conversación, and I decided to hacer senderismo (go hiking) in Cabo de Gata. We met up at 10:15 that morning and drove out to where we were going to leave the cars. The road up the mountain was windy and EXTREMELY narrow. Jenny had to honk going around all the curves just in case another car was coming so we wouldn't have collision. 

We got up to the top and started the hike down the mountain along a dirt road. Once we got to the bottom where the beaches started, we decided to take a more difficult route with views of the water. Since I had hiked the area once before with Endika and his sister, I told everyone it wasn't that hard and that we should do it. They all agreed and we started along the trail.

 View from the beginning of the hike                                

Group shot near the beginning of the hike
Photo by Jenny

Photo by Jenny

This picture was taken from the same beach pictured above but facing away from the sea. The contrast is incredible. Gotta be one of my favorite things about this place. It's got a little bit of everything.
Photo by Jenny

The agave plants I wrote about in my last post about Cabo de Gata
Photo by Jenny

La playa de monsul
David Bisbal, a famous Almerían pop singer filmed part of one of his music videos here, so everyone knows it as "the beach where Bisbal shot his video" instead of Monsul

Once we had passed Monsul, I knew that we would have to cross at least one more mountain before getting to Genoveses, the place where we had decided we'd eat. However, I didn't remember the route as well as I thought because as it turned out we had to cross like 3 more haha. I kept saying, "Yeah, it's just on the other side of this next one!" And I kept being wrong haha. I'm pretty sure at one point Brenna and some of the others were about ready to kill me. Every time we got to the top of the mountain and I was wrong, Jenny and I just laughed--as discreetly as possible so as not to piss off the others. 

Note the cool volcanic rock in front of us

This picture and all those that follow (minus the last one) are stolen from Jenny

This was the part where Brenna freaked out because there wasn't a "path" anymore haha
According to her, at this point we weren't hiking, we were scaling a mountain hahah
Also, the very last mountain in the background with a tiny little dot on top is where we started!

A cool-looking dune with volcanic rock in the background

Finally, at mountain number 4, I reached the top, looked out across the field of green and saw THIS! This is Genoveses, the same beach I went to and wrote about in the old blog post I linked above. Everyone was pumped we had finally found it and with a view like this, any possible resentment that anyone was harboring against me melted away haha. We hiked down to the beach and camped out to eat before heading back towards the cars.

Lunch! The total hike time to get here was 3 hours and the total number of mountains climbed was 4! Go us!

After we finished lunch, we rested for about 20 or 30 minutes and then headed back. Instead of reclimbing all the mountains, we took the dirt road on which we had initially started. The total hike time to get back to the cars was only about an hour and a half and the path was like 80 times easier. When we got to the cars, we decided we'd make one last stop at the lighthouse which was at the bottom at the windy road we had driven up earlier. Jenny said we couldn't miss seeing El arrecife de las sirenas. I was super glad we stopped there because this is what we saw...

 
Arrecife de las sirenas, view from the lighthouse

Literally "The Mermaid's Reef," this place was named for the seals that used to perch themselves on the rocks and make noise (what do seals do? bark? howl?) which the fishermen believed sounded like the singing of mermaids. Another interesting tidbit is that this is the absolute southernmost point of Europe. Pretty cool huh? I had seen pictures of this many-a-time because it's the first thing that pops up when you Google "Cabo de Gata," but I had never actually seen it in person. It is SO cool and this picture doesn't do it justice. The same can be said for the entire natural park. You really can't understand how beautiful it is just from looking at pictures. I wish every single one of y'all could experience how amazing it is in person. So, let me know when you're coming to visit ;)