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| The South of Spain |
| Our house was the one on the bottom right. |
| Southern Spain was beautiful. We stayed at a house called Casa Sofiia. We were situated in the middle of almond groves, olive groves and goat farms. The kids enjoyed picking, shelling and crushing almonds. It took a lot of winding back roads to get there from the large coastal city of Malaga, where the airport was. The nearest town, Villanueva de la Concepcion, 4-5 miles away, sat at the foot of a large mountain that we hiked on, El Torcal. A small medieval city, Antequera, was about 15 miles from us. You had to go around El Torcal to get there. We also visited the ancient cities of Ronda and Granada, which were several hours from us to the west and east of us respectively. |
| The large wooden bull on the hill is a prominent local landmark. It is where our exit was off the freeway from Malaga. |
| El Torcal loomed over the whole area and you could see it if you climbed the small mountain behind our house. |
| We ran into these guys when we were getting gas in Villanueva de la Concepcion one day. We think they were all decked out for the Three Kings Day celebrations the day before. |
| We climbed El Torcal and were victorius! We hiked a 3 km trail on our only day of less than perfect weather. It was cool and foggy all day. The trail was a bit challenging (and muddy at spots) but Rachel loved climbing on the limestone formations. |
| We ran into a bunch of wild mountain goats while hiking on El Torcal. At the end of our hike we discovered some "mountain cows"! They had wandered off in the fog and ended up near the El Torcal parking lot. |
| Antequera dates from Roman times. |
| We discovered a genuine bullring in Antequera. |
| We climbed some medieval fortifications above Antequera and this was the view. There are also excavations of Roman baths in the area. |
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| Casa Sofia |