Guadix

October 13th

Today we were going to the city of Guadix in the north eastern part of the Granada Province and the weather couldn't have been nicer.  The drive to the city was beautiful as we drove up through the mountains and saw the leaves of the trees changing color.

Guadix is a small town that is famous for its man made caves dating back to the 13th century.  These white lodgings mark the brown hillsides.  Originally homes for recluses and exiles, the caves were passed on through the generations and now sport modern amenities like running water, electricity, and television reception.

Arriving in Guadix, we drove once through the "Barrio de las cuevas," passing hundreds of caves built into the side of the hill.  We doubled back to a place where we could park the cars and hiked up a winding trail in the direction of a lookout.  We explored some sketchy, dark, litter-ridden, abandoned caves on our way up to the look out.  I was the first to go in and walked around the pitch-dark rooms with my small cell-phone flashlight waiting for our visit to turn into a horror movie.

The lookout on top of the mountain had a great view of the surrounding area.  We could see the giant sand stone cathedral in the center of the town and also the ancient Moorish fortress that perched along the opposite mountain ledge.

Descending the mountain, we headed for the little museum about the caves and history of Guadix.  The docent was very informative and the museum was interesting despite being extremely small.  The museum was a cave like the ones we had seen from the mountain.

We stopped at a bread and cheese shop and bought some food for a picnic.  The cathedral was closed until the late afternoon and the Moorish fort was under renovation and closed to the public.  We decided to leave Guadix and drive another 40 kilometers or so to the town of Baza which according to our free map from the Granada tourism office seemed to be right on a lake.

Baza turned out to be a town in the middle of the desert with no lake to be found.  We then took a back rode through the remote country side for about 30 minutes before finally arriving at the lake and entering another town called Zújar.  The lake and surrounding valley had a lunar appearance with jagged rocks and bowls in the terrain.  There were two "lakes"a large one that spread out around the area and a smaller one where we parked the car that seemed confined to a walled in area.  Putting my hand in the water, the temperature was like a warm shower.  As we found out later, the smaller lake is fed by natural hot springs, and has a consistent, almost hot, temperature the whole year round.  My roommate Antonio jumped in immediately.  No one else wanted to join him, but putting any thoughts of contracting giardia or some other water born illness out of my head, I joined Antonio and had a nice time swimming around.

We had a pleasant picnic on the rocks with a great view of the mountains.  After relaxing in the sun, we piled back in the cars and returned toward Guadix.  We had wanted to see the cathedral, but it was still closed when he arrived.  The drivers of the cars needed some caffeine, so we stopped at a small cafe and then drove back to Granada as the weather was changing for the worse.

The combination of music, rain, and being in the backseat put me straight to sleep. I woke up in Granada to find us at the gas station and in the middle of a torrential rain.

We returned the cars and then walked under the canopies of the shops to our apartment.

Antonio had a lot of vegetables from his parents that needed to be eaten, so we set about making a large, multi-course dinner.  The other kids went out to buy some bread and we ended up having a big potluck dinner.  It was a nice end to a great three day weekend.