Etapa 2 — Pinos Puente to Moclín

We had coffee at the café of the Hostal Montserrat at 7:00, and by 7:15 we were on the road,  pre-dawn. We reached the edge of town about dawn. The light and the temperature were great. Once we were out of town, the first half hour or so was along the narrow shoulder of a highway, but then at the Cortijo de Búcor, a farmhouse and a semi-abandoned hamlet, we started on a dirt path through some olive groves, then crossed the highway into an open field, and went up a narrow dirt path on a mountainside, among olive trees, almond trees, and pomegranate trees, all the way to the town of Olivares.

In Olivares we had coffee and tostadas with puréed tomato, manchego cheese, and olive oil. Although we had walked about ¾ of the kilometers of this etapa, the last 3.3 km is steeply uphill, as we could see from our elevation maps. As we said goodbye to the bartender, he warned us "Muchas montañas para Moclín." Fortified with food and caffeine, we figured we could handle it. We crossed the bridge over the Rio Velillos, and walked up through the town.

From the edge of town, the climb became extremely steep, and after 300 meters or so of that, Yung Wha made the executive decision that her heart was not going to tolerate another 3 km of that climb. So we walked back down to the last suburban hamlet we had passed. There we asked a guy who was painting his fence, and a postman who happened to be driving by, how we could get a bus or taxi to take her the rest of the way. They figured we might be able to catch the last bus there if the mailman drove her back down to Olivares. That's what we decided to do, and they got there just in the nick of time for the postman to flag down the Alsa bus that was going through town. So, thanks to his kindness and heroism, Yung Wha was back on her way to Moclín.

I restarted on foot, heading back up the daunting mountain path. Because of that delay, however, it was by then 1:00, which is by no means the ideal time of day to be making that hike. And once I got a bit further up, what had been extremely steep became insanely steep, literally about 30° at times. Not great for my arthritic hips, but I took it slow and paused every 100 meters (or more like every 50 meters toward the end). As we had experienced a few years earlier in the mountains of Tuscany, what appeared to be the mountaintop was actually just hiding the taller mountains behind it. The good part was that, the higher I got, the more majestic were the views of where I had come from, until I could see all the way back to Granada and beyond to the Sierra Nevada.

Finally the Castillo de Moclín came into view. I paused in the last patch of shade to rest up for the final push into Moclín. There, Yung Wha was patiently waiting for me outside the ayuntamiento in the Plaza de España.

After downing an entire litre of water, I was sufficiently rejuvenated to do a little more tourism in the upper part of Moclín while the townspeople were all inside for siesta time.