With just one month left in Granada, May has quickly become our "let's do everything we can in our last month here" month, and our remaining weekends here are packed with trips and activities. Last Saturday, we did a day trip to Guadix.
Guadix is a small city in the Granada Province, just 55 minutes by bus from the capital. We had quite an adventure later on in the day, but first things first. Guadix is a pretty small town, so we took the 1pm bus which would get us there at 2pm. Our plan was to have lunch, walk around and see the sights, then catch the bus back at 6:45. We bough a
vuelta abierta or "open return" ticket, so that in case we changed our minds, we could catch a later bus. It was a gorgeous day, though a little bit hot with the temperature nearing 30ºC. (It's been getting really hot in the city lately actually. I think Granada skipped Spring and the weather went from cold to hot.) But back to Guadix -- José, one of the teachers at Lyle's school lives there, so he picked us up from the bus stop and took us to lunch.
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| Beautiful day in Guadix |
Guadix is known for its
cave dwellings, as many of its houses were built into the sides of the rocks or hills. What looks like a simple door from the outside leads to a pretty big interior. In the summer, the caves are cool providing relief from the hot sun, and in the winter, they provide natural heat and warmth. In the olden times, these cave dwellings were houses of the locals, but nowadays, some of them have been turned into restaurants, bars, and hotels. We had lunch at
La Tinaja, which was in a cave house. I forgot to take pictures from the outside, but here are some shots of the interior. It was pleasantly cool inside.
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| White walls and low ceilings |
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| White walls and low ceilings |
The restaurant's specialty was cooking food
"a la brasa" which means grilled or barbecued. I had some
cordero (lamb)
a la brasa, and it was really good.
The restaurant was just a
little bit outside of the city, so after lunch we headed back to the center to explore more of Guadix. First up was the
Cathedral, a huge Baroque style cathedral located near the center. We paid the €4 to check out the interior and the museum.
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| The Cathedral |
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| Altar |
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| View of the choir from behind the altar |
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| Made of wax! |
We then walked around the city, but it was pretty small and there wasn't much to do. So José drove us around the province. We visited this place called the "
bad-lands" which covers
Purullena,
Marchal and
Guadix (municipalities in the Granada Province). This was due to the land splitting and eroding, creating a sort of gorge and some "bad lands." That's why cave houses are famous around the area, as there are many cliffs and hills to build houses into.
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| Bad-lands |
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| Bad-lands |
Next we picked up another friend, Nazaret, then drove to La Calahorra, another nearby municipality. On the hill of Marquesado in this village lies el Castillo de La Calahorra (La Calahorra Castle). The castle was one of the first Italian Renaissance castles built outside Italy, and the first one of this style built in Andalucía. Getting up to the castle was quite an adventure - we couldn't pass the paved roads because there was a procession, so we had to drive around and pass the rocky side roads. (It was extremely rocky and a bit steep. I sometimes felt we were going to fall off the road). But we made it up, and checked out the great views and watch the sunset.
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| El Castillo de La Calahorra |
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| Views + sunset |
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| Views + Sunset |
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| Sunset |
Getting down from the castle was yet another adventure, but we made it safely to the main road and headed back to Guadix. And then began our misadventures turned adventures. :) Since we had already missed the 6:45pm bus, we decided to "close" our tickets for the last bus out of Guadix at 10:45. I accessed the app on my phone, and was successfully able to book a seat on the bus. José and his friend Nazaret who had joined us had a dinner party to attend, so at around 10pm they dropped us off near the bus station and we said our goodbyes. Lyle and I had a quick tapas dinner at a bar, then we headed to the bus station to wait for the bus. We were there by around 10:15, also because Lyle wasn't able to close her ticket since she had bought it at the station and not online. When we arrived at the station the offices were already closed, so we just decided to wait for the bus, and hopefully Lyle would be able to talk to the bus driver to close her ticket.
So we were waiting and waiting... and the bus never arrived! There were two other guys at the bus station who were also waiting for the same bus. It was really strange because the bus time was listed on the website and on the app, and I was also able to close my ticket via the app. We tried calling Alsa, but in typical Spanish fashion, nobody was answering the phone. At around 11:00, the two guys told us that they were leaving, and at 11:15, we decided to leave as well.
Thankfully it wasn't that dark out, so we started walking towards the center, looking for a place to stay. Our phones were dangerously close to running out of battery, so we quickly shot Nazaret a message (José's phone was dead already). I was able to do a quick google search for cheap hotels, and found one for €40 for 2 people which wasn't that bad, considering. It was on one of those deal websites though, so I tried to book it (in case it was more expensive if we just walked in), but my phone died just as I was about to click "book." Thankfully, Nazaret replied at this time, and managed to call Lyle, and told us that they'd pick us up in the rotonda. And just in time too, because after the call, Lyle's phone died as well.
José and Nazaret were actually in Purullena, which is a municipality right beside Guadix. So we waited at the rotonda, and José and Nazaret came by in around 10 minutes. We ended up crashing their dinner party, and joined them for some drinks. And then Nazaret so graciously gave us a bed to sleep on... in her cave house!
The next morning we waited at the bus stop in Purullena, and when the bus arrived, we explained to the bus driver what had happened the night before with our tickets and the bus. He was very chill about it (pueblo life, maybe?) and he let us use our tickets for the bus ride back to Granada, with no extra charge. So quite the adventure, but it all turned out great, and we did not only get to visit but spend the night in a cave house!
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