Today was another ‘transfer’ day and after Colin had attempted to clean the car (we parked under a tree - enough said), we left our little apartment in the narrow streets of Cuenca headed to our fifth location of the trip - Albarracin. Colin had planned a route that encompassed some interesting locations on route as we like to make our travel days part of our travels.
First stop was the ‘Ventana del Diablo’ - the Devil’s Window - which is where I photographed this amazing gorge with a ‘photographers’ red roofed house. The storm clouds didn’t in fact generate any rain on our travels but made for some ominous skies.
Next stop was the ‘Ciudad Ecantada’ to ‘Enchanted City’. We detoured 9kms for this but it was well worth it. Nothin like its name, this is actually an amazing geological feature of boulders of rock formed under the sea, then forced up by tectonic plate action before finally being eroded by water and acidic rain. It was just a few euros for a 3 km circular walk around different rocks and small cliff all of which had their own names - the bears, fight between a crocodile and bear, the dog - you get the picture! A nice walk with unbelievable geology.
We drove on towards Albarracin and decided to stop at the very small town of Uña near a lake for lunch. There was parking next to a road cafe which although sold a very good ‘menu del dia’, also could have been awarded the world’s slowest service award. I am not sure that either of the two staff really wanted to be there and it literally took nearly 2 hours to get all courses of our lunch - I’ll be reviewing for Trip Advisor!
Final stop of the day (when I discovered the lack of phone signal to notify our hosts we were nearly there) as at the impressive sounding ’Source of the Rio Tagus’ - the river that flows through Lisbon and out into the Atlantic. In the event it was rather tacky with a muddy pond (lots of frogs though) and an over the top sculpture that did not make todays photo. Good to see anyway.
Onwards and finally we arrived at Albarracin with some challenging mountainous driving. Our message had made it through and Ampero (the hosts sister) was ready to check us in. We have a ground floor apartment in the old stables of La Casa Grande and there are four doors to lock and unlock to go in and out. Apparently the fiesta I had been written to about is on until Saturday so lucky we have food supplies to eat in as many of the restaurants I had selected are closed for the week.
Top news of the day - first of two large loads of washing have been done in the little laundry room - phew!
