March 9th 2018: Caminito del Rey
While living in Spain I am lucky enough to have school off on the majority of Fridays so I am able to travel more which is amazing. This Friday I didn’t plan a trip to another country so I decided to stay close to my home base and spend a night in Malaga and do the Caminito del Rey hike the following day.
The Caminito del Rey had been closed from 2000-2015 for being too dangerous, it was dubbed Spain’s most dangerous walk. With the reopening, the entire pathway was redone to have railings and way more safety features, they even require everyone to wear helmets! While walking you can see parts of the old path below the new one, the old path of concrete with holes and no railings barely clinging to the edge of the cliff is much more daunting compared to the newly built bridges and walkways with cables and beams securing them to the cliffs and handrails on both sides there was hardly anything to fear.
I took a bus from Granada to Malaga Thursday night and spent the night so that I would be able to go with a tour group that included a guide, transportation and entry ticket. The tour left from Malaga at 6:30am which I was fine with because based on the website information we would start the hike at 9 and be back by 2pm, it was an 8 hour tour so I figured 6:30-2:30, it wasn’t quite like that which was disappointing but the hike was definitely worth it. I was told by a few friends that had already done that hike that public transport to the start can be hard and since it starts in one place and ends in another and only has one way traffic it can be hard to organize but the tour in my opinion was not really worth it and I surely could have made the whole journey quicker. It was nice however with the guide to get information about the walk and have other people to talk with.
Instead of starting the hike at 9 like I expected we picked up the last people at 8:30 and got to the start at about 9:30 but the guide had gotten us tickets with an 11 am start time so we had to wait until then to start. I was kind of annoyed about that, since I had no idea why it happened or that it would happen. This is the part of traveling that can be hard for me. For me depending on others for certain things can be difficult. I like to be on time or early and, especially in Spain and several other European countries, timeliness is not important. I am not very good a being a “go with the flow” kind of person. Sometimes I think I need to find people “like me”, but its really hard. I find most people are not like me. It makes finding and keeping friends difficult at times. Which is why I sometimes go off on my own because I don’t have to wait for people or depend on them to be on time or make plans. This is something I should work on.
Regardless once we started the hike it was amazing. We got lucky with a day of warm and sunny in a month that has been filled with rain and clouds. The Gaitanes Ravine is the gorge the hike goes through and was originally a walkway for workers at the Hydroelectric Company El Chorro. King Alfonso XIII took the path to Guadalhorce reservoir to inaugurate the dam Conde del Guadalhorce and thus it is called el caminito del rey or the king’s walk.
The hike itself was about 2.5 hours including breaks for talking and regrouping and snacks, it was beautiful with the incredible cliffs and river flowing below and the area is also home to vultures living in holes in the rocks. There are two ravines separated by a small valley and forest area, which was peaceful. The second ravine was the most dangerous, and where the biggest bridge crossing was. It was amazing and I loved it, but some people were nervous and scared about it. While with my anxiety I love bridges above ravines and jumping out of planes, I don’t like small group discussions, raising my hand in class or ordering food at a restaurant, this might seem weird but its just who I am.
At the end of the second ravine is a small shack with maps and information and a cat was hanging out there, I was sitting next to another girl in the group and the cat came up behind her and laid down so I of course petted it and it loved it, so I made a cat friend. Then we took the bus back, stopping for an hour in a small town to grab lunch. It was a pointless stop for me since I brought a lunch, but I didn’t mind too much. Then it was a 2 hour-ish bus ride to Malaga dropping off people along the way. In Malaga I went to the bus station and caught a bus back to Granada.
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