Day 21 Juviles to Yegen

I am terribly tired and annoyed by the blogging, which takes way too much of my time, so it'll be more pictures and less text this time.

In the morning I was greeted by a beautiful sunrise, still it was freezing inside the room. A dog came up to the door which I left open to see the sun, but I didn't have anything to give to him (only a shitty breakfast for myself), so he vanished again.

The plan was to make a shortcut of the official route by going to Cádiar directly and not going to some villages further south and then up again. I followed a wrong sign though, so I accidentally made an even better shortcut and went straight to Alcútar.

The dog showed up again when I left the hostel, and followed me all the way to Juviles. I decided to call him Chili, and tried to come up with a reason for that name, but I guess it's just the first thing that popped into my mind. I thought he would turn around at some point but he kept following me or running ahead. Sometimes he ran after a cat and was gone for a few minutes, and I hoped he had turned around, but then I could hear him dashing through the bushes and he soon was behind me again. 

Alcútar/Berchules:

Got terribly lost shortly after this marking and had to fight my way through thorny trees and bushes. Again and again I thought I had found the right path, because they were all going in the right direction, but ended up on potentially dangerous rocky terrain with no path whatsoever. Chili didn't know the way either. Finally I just climbed (in the actual sense of the word) about 20 meters uphill and after cursingly crossing a little acre I finally hit a dirt road that acted as if nothing had happened.

I found this very amusing:

And this I found not very amusing: steeply walking downhill on tarmac, can't get any worse. It got quite hot from here on, which totally fit the desert-like scenery. Luckily there was a cool breeze, but of course I got a sunburn in spite of putting on sun screen four times.

Super tired and exhausted I reached the Hostal Tiñao. Lorena, the owner, theoretically had her day off, so the restaurant was closed, but she still prepared some ham and bread for me and didn't even charge for it.

The sunset was incredible.

Now the still-almost-full moon is shining into my room and I'm cuddled into lots of blankets with a heater beside me. Don't really know where I want to go tomorrow and wish I had a tent. (There were so many places to camp today, I'm sure there will be more tomorrow.) Several hostals I couldn't reach via phone, let alone via the internet, so I don't really know what's available. Let's see how I feel tomorrow, it's kind of great to know that Granada is never more than 3 hours of hitchhiking away.