Un camino por las montañas en la mañana

We headed out this morning in search of a patch of grass to do some yoga. What we found was so much better. The streets of Ferrierola, our little home for the next week, are about four feet wide. The doors of each house are set into the walls of the buildings. Some houses have a few steps going up to the door, but most just have a single step up and through the door. The walls of the two story high buildings curve around corners, in a way that makes you feel as if you might be in a maze. We head out of the pueblo, and in just three minutes we are walking on a mountain pass. 

The first amazing thing we encountered was a fountain. Not just any fountain guys, a fountain that spouted mineral water!

This fountain is just outside the pueblo, about seven minutes walking from the apartment. We filled our water bottle and kept walking. Above us and below us were little farms, just like the one we will be working on. Most of the farms have a few olive trees, a few fig trees, sometimes a pomegranate tree or two, some almond trees, and a bed of vegetables. Ours has olive trees, fig trees, grape vines, tomato plants, almond trees, and two yerts. About fifteen minutes after the spring we are no longer passing any farms. We have gone completely out of the pueblo into the gorgeous rocky mountainside that surround us. 

Ferrierola is the little white town in the middle, the one with the bell tower visible. This view is situated only fifteen minutes walk from our apartment. It is easy to walk to that we might make it our morning yoga spot, even though we are standing on a man made rock platform that juts out from the mountain side. This morning however we decided that we should keep walking. While we did, we found many interesting things. One thing we noticed was that the smell of the place is really nice. It's rocky, earthy, flowery, sweet, and bitter all at the same time. As you can see in the photo, now is not the rainy season. We are pretty much on a mountain desert. Most of the smaller plants have dried up for the year. 

This thistle is one of the many spiky plants that we came across on our walk. The path we were following curves around the mountain in a similar way that the road we took to get to Ferrierola does. It crosses back and forth, always headed away from our pueblo. To our right, across the gorge is another huge mountain with a path that zigzags up its side. At one point we could see eight or so other hikers coming down from there. We passed them at the bottom of both mountains. Well, almost the bottom. We crossed them on the little bridge that spans between both mountains above the river that runs about 100 feet below in the gorge. Before crossing the bridge though, we went into the ruined stone house on our side of the mountain. I don't normally like to go into old ruins that I come across, but this one was just so beautiful that I had to. 

Bella thought it was beautiful too :)

We crossed the bridge, hiked up just a little bit, found our morning yoga spot and did our yoga. But first we built a rock pile to settle our energy. It was rather meditative. After our exercise we decided that we needed more water so back we headed. Our walk there had taking about an hour, our walk back took maybe 25 minutes. Just goes to show you how much time we spent looking around at the beautiful place we have come to!