Mini vacation with interesting architecture and fantastic cured ham
Sunday was spent with our good friends Jörgen and Soffen who visited us from Alicante. Great to be able to reconnect after almost a year. The day after they gave us a lift to Almeria where we picked up a rental car for a week. Our “mini vacation” was loosely planned but we wanted to see Guadix, a small town amongst other things famous for its many caves, used as living quarters. It seems these “houses” have many benefits, eg mediating temperatures and, of course, extending your house with an extra room only requiring a shovel and a bucket. We couldn’t resist trying out a cave apartment so we checked in for a night at the cave hotel Tio Tobas. We both had a good night sleep, even though it felt a bit strange to think about having maybe 5 meters of soft mud/gravel/sandstone above your head.
Next day we followed another tip from long time resident Swedes – Trevelez, a small village south of Mulhacén, the highest peak of the Sierra Nevada. Besides being one of the highest town/villages on the Iberian peninsula, this is also the “heaven of cured ham” or Jamon Iberico. The altitude (~1500m) seems to be perfect to produce the best quality air dried ham in Spain. Fantastic place this time of year with the valley facing south, day tems reached 25C. Fresh walnuts, citrus trees, etc. Only scary thing with this place are the roads, narrow, steep, crazy hair needle curves and amazingly large trucks passing by with F1 speed. This place will definitely be worth visiting again. For Jamon Iberico lovers, here is a great link to do a deep dive into ham stuff.
S/Y Tina Princess 