„Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.“

Instead of spending 4 months in Asia at the beginning of this year, I was forced to return to Europe for health reasons. As I was waiting for my surgery, I decided to escape the cold, grey winter weather of Austria for about 2 weeks. Fortunately, in Europe you can still book flights quite spontaneously, so I quickly decided to book a flight to Malaga and explore Andalusia a bit and my dad decided to join me!

After a late arrival and a night in Malaga, we drove along the coast past lots of ugly hotels to the city of Nerja. We hadn’t had the time to research much beforehand, so we literally discovered everything on the go. Nerja turned out a nice little town with a pretty beach for dad to take a dip. There’s also a famous lookout point called „Balcon de Europa“ and some old viaducts a bit outside town. We were pleasantly surprised by the warm weather that even made us buy some ice cream!

Afterwards, we continued our journey up to Granada. Instead of taking the highway, we took the A-4050 – a small but nicely built road winding its way through the mountains and offering some really nice views. We immediately fell in love with the landscape of Andalusia…

We then spent two nights in Granada, which was a bit short but we did manage to see the main highlights, starting with a visit to the Alhambra early in the morning on our first day. We had booked the earliest time slot for the Nasrid Palaces which I believe was a good idea, as its busy even in low season. The palaces were beautiful, with the architecture reminding me a lot some of the old buildings we had visited in Morocco in 2015. We really took our time and explored every corner of the palaces in peace, taking hundreds of photos…

After the palaces, we went to see the view over Granada from the different viewpoints and towers at at the Alcazaba. The view was stunning! The oldest part of Granada – the Albaicín – spreads out right in front of you with its hundreds of white houses with tiled roofs and little alleys between them. We were lucky that some fog was covering part of the city and giving the view a kind of mystical feel.

We then continued to El Partal and the gardens of Generalife. Since it was January, the gardens weren’t as spectacular as they probably are in spring, but they were still very pretty to walk around and we had yet again different views from everywhere.

Next, we had to search a bit to find the trail connecting us to the Albaicín and walked through the old quarter. It’s very hilly and we decided some of the highest viewpoints: Mirador San Nicolas, de San Miguel Alto and Cristobal. Out of all of them, I preferred the highest one (San Miguel Alto), as it gave us amazing views over the Alhambra. We also found a perfect little cafe with a view of the Alhambra to get some energy back after all the sightseeing and soak up the atmoshpere.

In the evenings, we walked around from tapas bar to tapas bar, sampling the local specialties as much as possible. Spain isn’t really a country for vegetarians, so for me, there often wasn’t that much choice available. It was still a nice way of spending our evenings, having some beers and snacking along the way.

Our second day in Granada was rather rainy unfortunately and we also had to check out of our apartment, which included having to leave the parking garage. A lot of the indoor sights only open at 10am, which didn’t give us a lot of choice what to see and do. We ended up checking out Hospital Real, Basílica de San Juan de Dios and the Cathedral which we had wanted to visit on our first evening, but where we had failed to find the main entrance. It was nice to see some more sights of Granada, but we were also excited to get to El Chorro for some climbing!

On our way to El Chorro, we decided to detour to El Torcal, something that suddenly popped up on my Google Maps and that looked kind of cool. Some oddly shaped rocks, maybe nice to see, I thought. We drove up quite a bit in the mountains, with the fog getting thicker and thicker around us. Suddenly, we were surrounded by these awesome pancake rocks, but it was wet, and you could barely see anything. So we had lunch in the car parking and waited. Suddenly, the fog started clearing up a bit and I quickly rushed out to take some pics. Fortunately, no rushing was needed as it started to clear up more and more. We ended up being able to hike along some of the nice trails that start at the visitor center and lead through the cool rocky landscape. I’ve never seen rocks like this before, so I was really excited!

Afterwards, we continued our drive on small mountain roads to the little hamlet of El Chorro. It’s an odd village with a power plant in the middle of it and all accommodation spread out over the area. I had booked us a little house that was super nice and comfy and where we stayed the majority of our time in Andalusia.

Most of the next 7 days were spent climbing at one of the various crags in the area. We spent some time climbing in various sectors of the huge Frontales crag, checked out Castrojo and Los Albercones and spent two days climbing at Desplomilandia, as it was too hot everywhere else. Yes, we were unlucky and caught a heat wave in January that made it near impossible to climb in the sun. So we retreated to the only properly shaded crag – Desplo(milandia). Desplo fortunately also ended up being my favourite crag – I really liked the ledg-y type of rock there and the style of climbing. The views over the huge reservoir were also just stunning, especially in the evening light!

One day, we climbed the multi pitch called „Blue Line“ – one of the favourites of the area. It was a great climb with amazing 360° views from the top, which we really enjoyed. Definitely recommended!

Next to climbing, we also drove around quite a bit and did some sightseeing. One day, we visited the cave of Ardales, as it was raining. We get an almost private tour with just one other man joining us. Unfortunately, the tour was in Spanish, which was a bit of a challenge for me, but I think I understood the gist of it. It was a cool experience to explore the cave in such a small group with our guide and just a simple torch each. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photos, so you will just have to google it. As it cleared up bit afterwards, we walked around Ardales town and had a look at the crag of Turón, located near Ardales. It was too wet too climb but looked impressive! Also, the reservoir lake looked very pretty driving back to El Chorro with the dark clouds building a nice contrast to the landscape. Overall not a bad way to spend a rainy day!

If you’re not a climber, you might still be familiar with El Chorro due to the famous „Caminito del Rey“. The caminito is a trail that leads through a spectacular gorge and used to be one of the „most dangerous hikes in the world“ as it led across old wooden boards into the steep gorge with just simple cables as a protection. Nowadays, the caminito has been renovated and is super safe to visit and definitely not dangerous anymore. It’s a bit of a hassle to book the ticket (individual tickets were sold out months in advance, so we had to join a guided tour) and to figure out the parking and bus situation, and we ended up having to wait around a loooot in the cold as we booked the first available time slot again. So yes, it was kind of annoying, and yes, there were lots of people. However, the gorge was still just really beautiful and spectacular to see. Fortunately, the guide didn’t really care too much about keeping us together as a group, so we could explore at our own pace. Definitely one of the cooler gorges I have visited in my life!

When had reached the top of the multi-pitch, we saw that there was a water reservoir on top of the mountain opposite of El Chorro. A lake on top of a mountain! I had a look on Google Maps and found out that there was even a viewpoint up there „Mirador Tajo de la Encantada“, so of course we had to drive up and check it out! Stunning views over El Chorro and all its crags awaited us – wow! I highly recommend to just drive up here on your first day in El Chorro, as it’s also really good for orientation purposes. We actually ended up coming back on our last evening to have a picnic and watch the sunset… what a way to finish our time in El Chorro!

Part of me would have loved to stay longer, but I was also eager to do some more sightseeing in the region. So we left our little house and continued our trip to Ronda, stopping in Setenil de las Bodegas along the way. Setenil is a cute little town with lots of photogenic white houses, some of them built into the rocks. A nice stop along the way!

We then had the afternoon in Ronda, which meant a busy program to walk along Paseo de los Ingleses, a long terrace from which you have really nice views of the surroundings, the cool rock that Ronda is built on and of course, the famous bridge Puente Nuevo.

We then walked over to the old center of Ronda, which consists of narrow alleys and a pretty square with some historical buildings. We spontaneously visited Iglesia de Santa María la Mayor, a Catholic church that offers beautiful views over Ronda from its tower.

Then, we walked all the way down the mountain, to get a good view of Puente Nuevo in all its glory from the front. In hindsight, this was a very long walk, as the nice pedestrian trail was just closed for renovations. So we probably should have gone here by car when arriving in Ronda. Oh well… some extra workout for us!

The next day was also our last day in Andalusia. We went on a short morning walk in Ronda to see the viaduct from the other side and get some more nice views of the city.

Then we continued to Malaga – although of course, we decided to make a little road trip out of it again. Instead of taking the direct route, we chose the roads that would lead us through the mountains to some viewpoints and through some cute villages. It was a nice, relaxed drive and we ended up making one more stop to see one last town that came recommended: Mijas. Mijas is yet another one of the white villages, that this region is famous for. It’s a lot more touristy due to its proximity to Malaga and all the day trippers heading up here, but was still nice to see.

To finish our trip, I had booked us a hotel in Torremolinos, just outside Malaga and close to the airport for our early morning departure the next day. We managed to catch some afternoon sun on the beach and dad went for a swim with the snowy Sierra Nevada in the background. In the evening, we struggled to find a restaurant that was open as it was low season. In the end we found some pizza to make us happy and some beers to cheer to our little Andalusia trip! Here you can find all my photos.