Having visited five cities and towns on this trip, I will say that Ronda is my favorite. I now understand why many authors are enchanted by this town. Listening to chirping birds and watching them soar across the deep gorge, inhaling crisp fall air in the peaceful morning, and enjoying breakfast with a view of a medieval town surrounded by nature is delightful.
Breakfast with a view
With another full day in Ronda, we decided to check out Puente Nuevo from the west side. After lunch at Las Tablas (again, because I have never had such tasty pork in my life), we went on a tiny “hike”. Less hiking, more exploring.
To get to the vista points, we had to cross over to the old town and head down Calle Tenorio. The set of steps leads you down to 2 vista points. Since most people headed to the first viewing point, we decided to proceed to the second one.
View from the second vista point. While there, we saw people close to the foot of the bridge, and that got us looking for hiking trails.Around the corner from the viewpoint is an old Roman archway. This led us to a semi well worn path.The downhill path was easy to follow until we reached a fork. We surmised the one continuing downhill leads to the stream, so we opted for the one heading up.Then we reached another fork.The one on the right brought us to an abandoned structure With log laddersThat led us to iron rungs! It’s Acadia all over again! If it weren’t for the fact that there were signs advising the use of carabiners, I would have scaled those rungs. Plus having a cautious Virgo by my side put a slight damper to my excitement.Not exactly equipped for climbing
With the iron rungs at the end of that short trail, we turned around to check out the other path.
This path (hugging the rock wall) brought us to the foot of the bridge Until we encountered this crevice Exploring But ultimately deciding that the crevice was too narrow. The best photo of the bridge came from this less traveled path.
Undeterred, we decided to see if there was another way by going back up to the first viewing point.
Lo and behold, there was a trail to the right of the fork.Trail looked heavily used, and it did get us to the foot of the bridge.Unfortunately, there was a locked gate with a platform path beyond it. This is the same platform that I had seen from our Airbnb apartment that wraps around to the other side of the gorge. At this point I knew that there was no other trail.
Even though this was a tiny baby hike, we got an unexpected and unplanned adventure in Ronda. If it weren’t for the fact that we were in a rush to get back for some hot chocolate and churros (shop closes at 4pm), I would have tried to convince Joe to explore the other trail leading down to the pool.
FIRE'd @ 47 