Ronda, May 24th

Yesterday I went to Ronda, a city about a 2 hour bus ride from Sevilla. What a gorgeous place. Its a small town, not all that much to do there, and judging by the huge quantity of shops, restaurants, and hostels, completely geared toward tourists. The city, with its whitewashed walls and quaint flowers on windowsills, is built on a plateau which spans a dramatic gorge. The buildings go right up to the very edge of the cliffs, and the gorge is spanned by a dramatically tall and thin bridge.

We had heard from friends that you could hike down to the bottom of the gorge, so after walking the length of the city (not a very time-consuming endeavor) we found the stairs that go down by the old moorish muralla (wall) and started down a not very well worn path. No one else was there. The path was just wide enough for your feet . . . in some places. If we hadn't been determined to get all the way down we might have lost it at a couple places. It was an absolutely beautiful hike. A river runs through the gorge, and it looks like they had channeled the water out to the cliff side, so there were many waterfalls and ruins. And waterfalls on ruins. And ruins with running water in the basement. And shady ruins with windows overgrown with leafy vines lookinout onto the waterfalls of the gorge. Lots of combinations of ruins and water, in general. I climbed through a doorway that had a waterfall flowing over it at one point – I had my umbrella, but I still got quite wet.

We made it down to the bottom of the gorge and ate lunch – I explored a bit farther to find the actual river, and touched it so I could say I really had gotten to the bottom. Then we started back up, and we found another branch of the path that we hadn't noticed before, leading back up toward the bridge and the city. From above, I had noticed a man-made cut in the rock face, and I hoped it would lead us there. We climbed through even more ruins, and waterfalls (yes, through), and sure enough, we found the cut in the wall. Except it wasn't a path; it was a channel for the water to go through, with a maybe 14 inch man- made wall closing the water in. On the other side of the wall was sure death. DEATH. I'm really serious, it was extremely sheer, and extremely high- we were only maybe halfway or a little more of the way down the gorge wall. I was the last person in line (I like to poke around taking pictures) so I could see Terry and Mariam standing on that thin wall – I was so nervous, I really wished they'd come back in. Of course, they're like “Karen, its actually not that bad!”, but they couldn't see the entirety of that sheer cliff. Once I got out there I realized that it wasn't too bad – it was easy to ignore the cliff on one side since you could keep one hand on the wall on the other – but I still felt a lot better when everyone got back. I would never have forgiven myself if someone had tripped on a tuft of grass and fallen to their death. I actually feel kinda bad for going out there myself, since I'm (perhaps a little irrationally) terrified that Francis will die before we get married and there I was taking a risk I didn't have to take.

Anyway, I waded in the river on the way back in from the cliff side, which was nice, and then we headed back up to kill a bit of time on the quiet, pretty streets of Ronda until our bus left. It was a really great day, I'm really happy I was able go before I left Spain.