Petri
Senior Insider
We had lunch on the big rock on the lower left side of the above photo. Laura also figured out it was a nice spot to enjoy the sun while I was hiking uphill to the waterfalls -- I could hear and see the remarks "Don't go there!". I could swear she was just giving a thumbs up and challenging if I can go any higher.
In the heat and sunshine the cold mist from the waterfalls and blue water was just "yelling" -- jump in!
After a while, it was time to go back down. The beautiful thing about the mountains is the variety of scenery. The fauna takes different colour, shape and form at the different altitudes and even the rocks can be anything from dark grey to almost white. Just beautiful.
BTW, Telefonica has built a great mobile network here. We had great reception (Just sent a few texts.. honesty) but we never saw any cell towers. I recently read about a dutch woman who was hiking in Spain and was missing for two weeks. She had fallen into a waterpool of some kind and while looking for her, they also tried to triangulate her last known position from the cellular history data. Interesting.
The route back down was pretty simple as we just followed the gravel road we had passed before. We also got a nice view to the waterfalls on the other side of the valley.
And the valley itself.
We also got to witness some mountain action. There was a helicopter flying pretty low on top of the mountains and we saw some Guardia Civil's looking uphill with binoculars.
There's a helicopter in the center of the above photo.
It's still there, almost right in the center.
And after a while it gets up, and flies to the parking lot in the valley. I guess someone had a bit of an accident or similar and needed a ride. Or perhaps someone was trying to escape from Spain to France to get their bigger, crispier baquets. Hard to say, I didn't have the telezoom with me on the camera (zooming into the photo did reveal it was Guardia Civil heli).
The waterfalls still looked beautiful from another angle. If we had been a bit smarter -- and woken up earlier, we could have done both routes -- and had we known that the hike up to the waterfalls starts from the other routes return path.
And we could even spot the edge of the plain where we had just been. The small waterfalls in the middle of the trees are part of the stream that started from the waterfall where we had lunch. Also the other waterfalls in the plain lead to this single stream.
Another great day for these tourists!