Day 4 - Trevelez in the Sierra Nevada

Having just arrived in Granada, we decided to leave the next day. No, it wasn't that we didn't love Granada -- we did, but our tickets to the Alhambra (Granada's biggest attraction) weren't until tomorrow, and we wanted to take advantage of having a car to get out of the city. Jordan had read about the little town of Trevélez high up on the south-facing slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and wanted to go there.



We hadn't found an open grocery store the night before so we didn't have breakfast-making supplies in the apartment. Instead, we meandered down past the Plaza Nueva and the cathedral to Plaza Bis-Rambla (we love the Moorish names!) for coffee and pastries at an outdoor table.

After getting our car from the parking garage we drove south over the west end of the Sierra Nevadas, which true to their name were still covered with snow. We don't understand how an area with orange and olive trees can be so close to snow. We drove by a grove of huge modern windmills turning slowly and majestically in the winds off the Mediterranean. It was a great to compare them to the Quixotean windmills of yesterday.



We turned off onto a series of narrow winding roads into La Alpujarra, the area between the Sierra Nevadas and the sea. This was the area where Boabdil, the last Moorish king in Spain, was given a small fiefdom after he turned Granada over to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492.



Trevélez is at the head of a high valley (below the snow line, though) where the air is pure and dry. Farmers from all over southern Spain ship smoked hams to Trevélez to hang and cure in the dry air. We ate amazing ham and smoked pork loin in every possible form -- everything on the lunch menu included ham. (Zac had to remove ham from his chicken cutlet.) Our favorite was the lomo iberico, a thinly-sliced smoked, dried pork loin. Jordan talked the rest of us into trying blood sausage, and it wasn't that bad!

On the way back down to the highway we came to a huge new dam that we'd been seeing sings about. Higher in the valleys were lots of signs saying things like "Farms not golf courses!" and "Keep the Alpujarra as it is!" We figured that this dam, the Embalse de Rules, must have been what the fuss was about. It was new enough that water had barely begun to back up behind it; it looked as though it would take years to fill the lake it would create.

Before giving up the car, we stopped at a shopping mall to pick up groceries and running shorts (piratas) for Jordan. With our purchases, we parked and look the local bus back to the apartment.

After a rest, we wandered around the Albaicín again, looking for night life, but found quiet, empty cobblestone alleys. We ate at El Aqua, where we had two kinds of fondu (cheese and meat) and another wonderful view of the Alhambra.