Day trip from Cuenca

Day trip from Cuenca

Today we woke up to some bits of blue sky, yeah!  We decided to head out of town for the day to explore the region. 

We head North into more mountains from where we are now, and it is colder!  Our first stop is the Enchanted City which is about 25 km from town.  There are about 200 hectares of land that is full of eroded rocks in all kinds of interesting formations.  Some rocks were shaped like different animals, faces, castles, boats etc.  you had to use your imagination for some, and we had a hard time translating the signs.   We spent about an hour here picking our way between people, trying to get pictures with no one else in them.  When we arrived it wasn’t too busy, no line up for tickets, at 3.00 Euro entrance they have a goldmine here during the holidays!  Not much maintenance.  When we left the lines were huge just to buy a ticket, and it started to rain, perfect time to leave for us.

We thought it was funny until we translated it to French

Crocodile and Elephant

From here we travelled further north to the Nacimiento Del Rio Curvo, which are waterfalls.  This area has had much more rain than normal, and we were told that the falls were bigger than they had been in 60 years.  It was impressive, but a muddy mess to climb higher than the bottom of the falls, and as Canadians we have so many pretty water falls that it disappointed a little.  But, the Spaniards again were out in the hundreds at this stop.  You could tell how much higher the river is than usual, and the falls were definitely flowing much wider than normal, some of the stairs were under water, as well as the trees along the riverbank.

Falls overflowing Staircase

From here we headed a little further North to join up with another road so we could do a circle instead of returning on the same road.  Considering how many people were at the last 2 stops I have no idea how they all got there, there was very little traffic on the road.  The drive was beautiful, many different mountains and valleys, and very green in spots because of all the rain. 

Guardrail picture for Freddy

Beautiful little towns along the drive

Ran out of time to hike to these falls, this is far from the highway with Andres camera

  We saw some interesting new signs, can you guess what these are?

 

Do we need snow tires?

First time we've ever seen this sign, had to look it up in the Spanish English dictionary

We picked up some bread, cheese, and cucumbers at a little 2 aisle supermarket.  The back was a woman and her daughter selling the bread, and they had some buns that I think may have been for Easter so we got some of these also.  We stopped at a nice picturesque spot on the drive and had lunch on the side of the road.  

Chef Andre hard at work, nice knife, I think the corkscrew is on the other side

 

Continued on our drive and stopped in a really nice small town called Priego. This area is known for it’s basket weaving, and we saw lots of the willows that they use growing and drying in the fields, but we never did see any baskets for sale.  They really looked like pussy willows from a distance. 

 

For our dog lover friends

Drying willows for baskets

For Jill, spring is definitely here in the mountains

We drove up to the monastery, very steep climb up, with spectacular views, the monastery was from the 1500’s.  

Drive to Monastery from the 1500's

View from Monastery

Canyon we drove up to get to Monastery

 Around here we also saw lots of holes in the mountains on the edges of the little towns we drove through, we’re still not sure what they were, any guesses?

Maybe cemetery??

 

Returned back to Cuenca as it was getting dark, headed out for a few pictures without the rain, and for supper.  Went to a restaurant that we had tried to get in for lunch yesterday but it was packed, we lucked out tonight because we were there around 8PM, really early for Spain so they let us take a table without a reservation as they knew we would be done by 10PM when they were booked full.  Tried some local cuisine for apps which were good.  They were like 4 different tapas, wild game pate, red pepper salad, cod with garlic egg and potato spread, something like antipasto.  All were good and made on site.  The owner is originally from Canada and has owned this place for 30 years, nice to hear someone speaking English.  A woman and daughter also came in at the end of our meal from Calgary, these are the first people we have heard speaking English since we got here, so we chatted with them for a while.  Walked around the square for a bit before the hike back down from Old Town to call it a night.

Waterfall in front of our apartment

Glad I wasn't driving

Leaving restaurant, Andre likes doors....