This past weekend, I went on a hiking trip with 27 other students from my language school (Cegrí) to the Alpujarras. The Alpujarras (for those of you who don’t know) is part of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of southern Spain. There are several different areas of the mountain. We left on Friday morning (4/18) and returned Saturday evening. Of course, the only weekend we get rain is the one for which we are scheduled to go hiking in the mountains! Some of my friends and I were walking to the plaza where we were to catch the bus and it started down pouring on us. We quickly caught the first bus that we could and rode it the rest of the way to the plaza. We thought our trip was doomed but actually it turned out to be a wonderful first day. We made it to the mountains (after a long and winding bus ride – I certainly took Dramamine!) We left our stuff in a big room and headed off to hike. We decided to cut the root short so that we were near a small town if the weather were to break loose on us again. It was soooo beautiful and breathtaking. We were able to see very clearly the top of the highest peak of the Sierra Neveadas (Mulhacen). I can’t do it justice by simply using fancy adjectives but needless to say there is nothing like this ANYWHERE in Michigan!! There were definitely some scary moments (near edges of cliffs, hiking downhill on loose dirt and rock, etc…)

We had a nice picnic lunch and then headed back to the hostal to relax and hang out. We had a really nice dinner at the hostal. Some people ate conejo (bunny) and it was not pleasing to look over and see an entire little peter cottontail sitting on peoples plates. Our director, Miguel, would request the head of anybody’s bunny who did not want to eat it! Ewwwww

Saturday was one continuous day of rain but we persevered and hiked anyway. A lot of people had either ponchos or rain coats. The hike on the second day was supposed to be longer but since it was raining and cold, it too got cut short. We hiked for about 3 hours and had a break for a snack then we made it to the next town where the bus picked us up and took us back to camp where we attempted to dig out as many dry and warm clothes out of our backpacks as we could. We all bonded sitting for a few hours in that room and we ate a nice lunch and then took off for Granada. The ride home was interesting as we had to stop at one point while 4 girls got off the bus thinking they were going to get sick. Luckily, no one got sick and we made it home just fine. It was an amazing trip and I had so much fun!

Get excited - it took me less than a week to make another post!!! yay!