Andalucia. The sexy bottom of Spain. Moorish history oozes from this region’s pores: windows peek out from onion-domed eyelids, and shiny geometric tiles have spread across every available surface in lieu of moss. Flamenco was born here, and dancers still spin each other around every day regardless of the heat, which is a direct gift from the sun and sweltering African winds.
Seville and Granada are Andalucia’s perennial chart-toppers. Everyone knows and loves them, and for good reason. But I’m here to speak for Andalucia’s funkier “B-side.” These 4 unique things to do are not as widely known, and they’re perhaps a bit less polished. There was just something about each one of them, though. You could say they got stuck in my head.
Baelo Claudia
Baelo Claudia is one of the coolest Roman ruins I’ve seen, and yes, I’ve been to Rome and Efes and Pompeii. It’s a small ruin, so its merit mostly comes from its location and relative obscurity. The former Roman fishing port sits right on the secluded Bolonia Beach. You can stand on a 2,000-year-old street and look down into a honeycomb of old fish-curing pits, and meanwhile the backdrop is the golden beach and Strait of Gibraltar and Morocco’s distant Atlas Mountains.
Turn 180° and you’ll see the town’s amphitheater, forum, and limbless statues of old dead guys (as is tradition), with a backdrop of forested hills. The city even had a steam bath, for some unholy reason, considering all of the outdoors felt like a steam bath even in late September. Whenever you get tired of looking at historical rocks, you can just walk over to the beach. No judgment if you only make it to the beach bar. When in Rome!
Tip: Visiting is free for EU/US citizens. There might be a small fee (1-2 Euro) if you’re from elsewhere.
El Rocío
The Wild West is only an hour from Seville, at least if you arrive by car. If you arrive by horse it takes a bit longer, but it’s the second most popular travel method to El Rocío. It seems the entire town was engineered for quadripeds. The streets are unpaved dirt, which is better for horse’s hooves. Every house has a hitching post out front and a stable out back, and at least one of the town’s unlikely mansions has an elevator that’s just for horses. Even the bars have hitching posts. Does it count as drunk driving if the horse is sober while the human driver is not?
The town’s main draw is a sprawling white hermitage. It’s modern tradition for brotherhoods from all over the region make regular pilgrimages to town, even if it’s just for the weekend. I visited on a Saturday and watched as 100 women in folk dresses followed a pipe-and-drum band into the hermitage. By the time I tucked into my dinner of gazpacho and fresh fish, the procession had swelled to include nearly the entire town. For a good 90 minutes, every family walked down main street and swore some kind of oath to Santa Maria over a loudspeaker that echoed down the dusty streets. “Charmed and bemused” doesn’t begin to cover my opinion of the whole affair.
El Rocío’s other major draw is the Doñana National Park, a seasonal wetland that’s both critical habitat for wildlife and a hotbed for water-rights political controversy. Herds of feral horses roam the Doñana, mingling with migrating birds and secretive Iberian lynx out among the cork oak trees. I rose before dawn to take a guided tour of the dry-season wetlands. Although our guide had seen a lynx kit just a few days before, we had to make do with a few birds and deer sightings, and the knowledge that the cats were thriving out there somewhere.
The cherry on top, at least to a tree nerd like me, was El Rocío’s grove of ancient olive trees. They’re heirloom olives that are quite a bit different from modern cultivars, and their trunks are pitted and gnarled. The oldest has stood at the edge of Doñana for seven centuries, silently bearing witness to Earth’s unfathomable change.
El Torcal de Antequera
Have I mentioned recently that I love rocks? It’s possibly the reason I loved El Torcal de Antequera, which is a huge geological playground on top of a mountain. I walked the longer yellow trail, which snakes through narrow humid canyons. Weird bubbling towers of karst limestone flanked the trail. I found maple trees with leaves shaped like dinosaur feet, which is ironic since dinosaurs still walked the Earth while El Torcal’s rocks were forming. I half-expected to come face-to-face with an actual dinosaur in that alien landscape. Alas, the closest I got were birds and lizards.
Or was it?
At the outer edge of the trail, I slid through a slot canyon, rounded a corner, and heard a crunching sound above me. Hearing weird noises near your head is mildly concerning when you’re hiking alone, so I flinched. High atop a boulder stood an ibex, munching on a tree’s canopy. It was the first ibex I’d ever seen, so my reaction to the common goat-like animal was probably outsized. In fact, it’s possible my reaction to the whole natural park was outsized. Or was it?:
Tip: There’s also a much shorter wheelchair-friendly path to a viewpoint for those with limited mobility.
Los Cahorros (hiking)
At the edge of the (original) Sierra Nevada mountains is a playful trail that hops across boulders and suspension bridges and eventually takes you all the way through a slot canyon. Once inside the towering canyon, the trail becomes a narrow concrete pathway just above the river. In some places it hugs the cliff so tightly that you have to either crawl along or use metal handholds to avoid tumbling into the drink. In other places, it slaloms past feral fig trees that have escaped gardens, and once it even slips through an enormous cave.
Rock climbers kept appearing from nowhere and then disappearing again, usually into side canyons or straight up the walls. Groups of teenagers kept disappearing into the brush, to hang out in the river’s eddies. Eventually I found my own hidden pool beneath a waterfall that was only as tall as I am. I cooled my heels for awhile, and then for some absurd reason, decided to climb barefoot up the waterfall and into the little canyon beyond. A bigger waterfall splashed down inside a cave, and even there, I spotted a line of climbing anchors leading higher into the canyon.
When I returned to my tiny waterfall, I realized that getting back down the smooth rock was going to be a problem. It was my “cat syndrome” at work: climbing up is easy, but you might need to call a fire brigade to get me down again. I managed to rescue myself, albeit with a lot of swearing and bleeding and semi-controlled falling. On my way out of the canyon I just splashed along in the riverbed, letting out the inner child who loves to stomp in puddles.
Tip: Park here and then it’s a 15-min walk downhill to the trailhead (it’s signed). Full route here. Flooding is possible in winter.
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