Caminito del Rey

Somewhat fitting, but totally unrelated to the three kings day, today Rachel, Laura and I traveled to El Chorro, Spain:

To walk the Caminito del Rey, at times known as "the world's most dangerous walkway", though now it is a perfectly safe cliff hike in a Spanish National Park. This walkway is bolted to the side of a canyon that contains a number of hydroelectric projects for southern Spain. It's both a tourist attraction and a service corridor for the dam projects.

We caught the train out of Sevilla this morning, made it to El Chorro by around 10:30am, checked into the hotel and then caught the shuttle bus to the top of the trailhead. We met our guide and walked the 8km trail back down to the hotel.

Hardhats were required. Mostly to protect from falling rocks from above:

Much of the walkway was like this--bolted onto the sides of the canyon:

A look up the canyon:

An old bridge across the river from one side of the canyon to the other:

Our tour guide, Estella, spoke alternately in Spanish and English:

She was a good Spanish language listening exercise for us.

The sky was deep blue. There's an abandoned building along the way:

Another look up the canyon:

On the right, other visitors on the walkway. On the left, a railroad bridge:

We actually crossed the railroad bridge on our way to El Chorro on the train.

Here we see the new walkway above the original service walkway:

The last canyon opened out onto a reservoir. The town and our hotel are on this reservoir. To get there, we had to cross that bridge:

Here's another view of the new walkway above the old one:

Here's the walkway bridge across the canyon at the end of the hike:

Some video of the three of us trekking across the suspension bridge:



Here's Rachel taking pictures back towards the canyon from the reservoir:

Here's the special Christmas Cruzcampo beer I had at dinner:

Cabalgata de los Reyes Magos

The big parade celebrating the three kings wound its way around Sevilla today for 6 hours. According to accounts on the web, around 90 tons of candy will be tossed from over 30 floats. The cavalcade went down our main street, and they were not lying about the candy. Buildings and balconies in our neighborhood were decorated with balloons for the occasion:

Crowds started building along the route:

Even on the bridge:

Here's a panorama of the part of the crowd we were in:

They approached from the bridge:

The black-faced Bedouins distributed candy:

I have videos of people tossing massive amounts of candy from floats, but it's still uploading. EDIT: Here's the video:


Marching bands played popular songs that really got the crowds going:



Standing under the shower of candy was like being in a hailstorm--a bit nerve-wracking. There was so much candy, it just lay unclaimed at our feet:

And crushed by the tires of the passing floats:

Bringing up the rear of the cavalcade were the street sweepers doing their best to clean up all that sticky candy. I can't imagine what this would be like if it rained:

EDIT: Here's the video of the street sweepers bringing up the rear:



Here's Rachel's haul. Halloween in January:

Then, to add to the booty, Palma and Mario dropped off a traditional pastry:

It's a cream filled ring. Somewhere in the ring is a small toy and somewhere else is a bean. If you get the toy in your slice, it's good luck. If you get the bean, maybe not so good. Rachel's piece had the toy. No one got the bean yet:

There was also a paper crown in the pastry:

They do love their processions, parades and cavalcades here. It's fun to be a part of it.

El Heraldo Real

The build up for the Epiphany on Jan 6th continues. Today we visited a parade near the Cathedral that heralds the coming of the three kings. In this event, the kings receive the keys to the city of Sevilla--presumably so they can deliver presents to all the good children. As children send letters to Santa Claus in the US, children here write letters to the kings. Children along the parade route today dropped their wish lists into a receptacle carried along in the parade:

Along with the usual marching bands:

People on horses tossed candy to the crowds. I gave what I managed to catch to kids around me in the crowd, but I kept one for documentary purposes (it was pretty good too):

If you have a sharp eye, you'll see a large number of Balthazar's bedouins wearing black face again:



After the parade, street sweepers followed--picking up unclaimed candy I suppose:

El Heraldo desfilará por San Jacinto

The big day of the Christmas season in Spain is Jan 6th, The Epiphany. It largely commemorates the arrival of the three kings in the manger story of Jesus. This is when people in Spain exchange gifts--not on Christmas Day as in the US. There are big parades around town on Jan 5th and Jan 6th. Free candy is thrown to children, bands, floats, the whole nine yards. There are also smaller processions that herald the coming of the three kings. We've had a couple of them in our neighborhood today. Small processions, candy, a band, folks on horseback.

Though there is little in the bible about the three kings (only in Matthew), many artistic renderings have one of the kings (Balthazar) with dark skin. There is little to no factual information about the skin tone of any of the kings. However, folks here in Spain certainly fall into the category of people that think Balthazar had dark skin. So much so in fact, that the people in the parades playing the role of Balthazar will wear black face, as seen here:

This would be wildly controversial in the US. Here, however, it seems to be expected. Even the child riding with this "Balthazar" is wearing black face. Different cultures, different norms.

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One of the little toy shops in our neighborhood always has a fun shop window display. This one shows a little mock up of the three kings parade as it crosses our bridge. See Laura's blog for a full photo. I was intrigued by the construction of the bridge and chapel. All of it is 3d printed. A novel and fun application of 3d printing:

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We went to the grocery store at 4pm today. Practically deserted. I think we found our new regular  shopping time:

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This evening we went to the craft/artisan market at Plaza Nueva. Some nice work on display. One of the booths was of a printmaker from Triana (right down the block from us). We may buy a print to bring back to the US with us. We'll have to drop into the shop and have a look around:

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Emily made it back to Santa Barbara and reunited with her bunny. Some experiments that she left while visiting us here for the past 10 days seem to have turned out well. She's already back in the lab checking results.

Rachel is having fun with Emily G. in Tangier. She's been sending us lots of pictures. She even managed to reunite with a friendly dog that we encountered in the medina when we were there. She gets back to Sevilla on Sat.

Empty Nest

This morning we got up early so Emily could catch the bus to the Sevilla airport to begin her long journey home to Santa Barbara. After farewells, she and I caught the bus out to the airport. I left her at the security line. As I write this, she's about half way through her Madrid to Los Angeles flight:

I've been following it for the past 6 hours. I still feel a little bad about what she went through to get here and back. I don't wish a 12 hour flight and a 9 hour time change on anybody. That said, it was nice spending time with her and Rachel.

Speaking of Rachel, she arranged to meet her friend Emily (different Emily), in Tangier these next few days. Emily is teaching music at a K-12 school in Casablanca, Morocco. Casablanca is a two-hour train ride south of Tangier, so they're kind of meeting in the middle. I went to back to the airport bus stop with Rachel this afternoon, but didn't go to the airport with her. Since she's coming back to Sevilla, she was able to just take my bus pass with her. After a much shorter flight, she's already tucked into her airbnb with Emily in Tangier (I spoke to her on the phone).

This is her giving me the thumbs up after she got on the airport bus. She'll be back on Saturday, but Laura and I are getting a preview of our impending Sevilla empty nest for the next couple of days. After three weeks of guests, Taylor, Rachel, Emily, Kathy and Ric; two trips, Granada and Tangier; things are a little too quiet, haha.

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Sevilla is still in holiday mode until Jan 6th. Public schools don't resume until Jan 7th. Life was kind of back to the normal hustle and bustle in the neighborhood today, but maybe a bit more so because the children are still out of school.

I got a bit of work done today. Tomorrow, I expect to put in another full day.

Laura went back to her Spanish class today for the first time in 2 weeks. Her teacher from last semester, Lucia, has left the school and is moving to Australia. Her new teacher, Carmen, seems good so far.