The final activity I had planned for the trip was a walk on the El Caminito Del Rey walkway near El Chorro, Spain. The "King's Little Pathway" is a 3 foot wide walkway pinned along the steep walls of a narrow gorge about 330 feet above the river and rocks below. It has been refurbished in the last few years, mostly because people kept falling to their deaths along the old path. While some of the danger has been taken away, it still looked like it would be massive fun.
The day before I was supposed to do the hike, I received an email telling me that my day had been cancelled, due to expected high winds. I had bought my ticket as soon as they came out for the year, in March, but the tickets are hard to come by if you don't get them early. Most are snapped up by travel companies who then sell them as part of travel packages. The email was in Spanish of course, and also instructed me to rebook for another day. After much consultation with Google Translate, I managed to book for the next day. It was the only day I had left, so it was either that day or not at all.
The morning of the hike was bright and sunny, and not too windy where I was, but I had an hour up into the mountains to drive, so I really didn't know whether I would be hiking or not. The drive was gorgeous, rugged mountains and beautiful valleys with various crops and terraced rows of olive trees. Finally I came to a lake with bright turquoise water and was soon at the trailhead. There were many people headed towards the trailhead, so that was a positive sign.
The trailhead had a small sign, which was outside of a bare rock tunnel entrance. Then you walked for a couple of hundred yards through the tunnel and came out by a pretty lagoon, and then walked for about a mile before you got to where they actually signed you in and checked your ticket. I was a little worried because I kept passing people coming out who looked dejected. As it turned out they were actually rejected, because they didn't change their tickets on the website and tried to use the ones for the day before when their hike, and mine, was cancelled. Red tape and fine print is everywhere.
They divided us up in groups of guided hikers, and like I chose, unguided hikers. The day was especially busy because of the many groups that had rebooked from the day before. That was really the only negative, too many people. After we had received our hardhats and a brief lecture on safety, we unsupervised hikers were let free to go on the walkway. The gorge was dramatically beautiful, there were waterfalls and rapids below us and towering cliff walls above us. If you didn't think about the fact you were hundreds of feet above the water and on a walkway clinging to the side of a cliff, it was just a pretty hike. Of course that was hard to do! I loved it, and kind of wished it was just a little scarier.
My favorite parts were when they had actually made part of the walkway have a glass floor when we were at an especially treacherous-looking bend in the path and at the end when you cross the gorge on a slightly swinging wire suspension bridge. That was fun! After the last of the walkway, you hike back to the highway, which was a half hour or so away. Then you had to get on a bus, with surly employees who apparently hated their jobs, for the ride back to the trailhead.
So that's another item off my bucket list, and well worth the effort. I can hardly believe all the different adventures I've had over the past month, and still have a few days to go before I head home. I'm headed off to Madrid next, one of my favorite cities. I'll be looking for new things to see in the city, so I'll let you know what I find!
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