James and Christine's Big World Tour: Magical Monachil and the Sierra Nevada

Time to forget the public transport and pick up a hire car for our next leg of the trip. James is the designated driver and seems quite excited to be driving, me not so much.
We set off in search of a little place called Monachil, situated just outside of Granada. All is going well until Google maps takes us into the centre of Granada by mistake, cue wrong turnings, reversing out of car park queues and me nearly crying.
Finally we make it to Monachil and our host guides us up a mountain to our little hut for the next few days. Its tiny and has an outdoor toilet and kitchen...we love it! As it is late all of the shops are closed so our hosts gives us some eggs, bread, tomatoes, wine and best of all, homemade goats cheese! What do we do with the best goats cheese we've ever tasted? We make toasties of course! A quick few games of snakes and ladders before bed (quick because James is so good at it), rock and roll babyyy!

The next day we wake up to a view of mountains with the sun beaming down on us, brilliant. A walk into Monachil to the tiny shop takes us past a dog arguing with a rock (the dog won) and a nice bar that filled up with walkers from the Sierra Nevada. Back to the hut to make some food and take a dip in our private pool whilst watching purple bees and being visited by various dogs looking to steal food. Our host has told us that there is a jazz night on tonight so armed with torches we walked through pitch black to find the jazz bar. We weren't disappointed as we caught a few ace jazz sessions. We love Monachil!

A visit to Granada is in store today and we wait patiently for the bus ignoring the one on the wrong side of the road. It starts to reverse and heads into Granada, doh! A nice stroll to Granada it is then. Granada is pretty and we have a walk around. The tiny streets of the old town have a very African feel; lots of shisha smoke blowing around and lots of crazy people pestering us to buy their pretty 'things'. We know the Alhambra is recommended but we haven't booked a ticket and don't really want to blow our budget going in so we settle for seeing it from afar followed by ice cream, after all the best view of a castle is the outside! We miss Monachil already and are happy when its time to go back. A quick stop at a trendy bar to watch the sunset before going back to our hut.

October 15th and its my birthday!!! Yippeee! We get up to watch the sun rise over the mountains but we time it wrong so an hour later and we're still waiting! We give up and get ready to go hiking in the Sierra Nevada. Omelette and toast for breakfast...oh wait, James left the bread outside last night and its been stolen by an animal. Omelette for breakfast. On our way to Los Cahorros we find our host's herd of goats and one nearly falls asleep when I tickle it behind the ears, I blinkin' love goats i do. The hike is an interesting one as there are rope bridges to tackle and parts where you wonder how on earth to get past. There are handles in some of the rocks and parts where you have to step down into rivers or crawl on hands and knees, it definitely wasn't boring. It was up and down all the way and the high bits gave us such a fantastic view of the mountains (and James the opportunity to stand precariously on the edge of big rocks) while the low bits were full of rivers, caves and hidden paths. After a couple of hours we somehow take a wrong turn and have to navigate down the mountain which results in me falling on my butt inches away from a spikey plant, phew! Back at the hut we get changed as James is treating me to a fancy meal in town. Its a nice quiet restaurant and its refreshing to have a break from budget travelling. We toast my 23rd (ay,why are you laughing?!) With some bubbly before the waitress and other diners sing happy birthday to me. We top the night off with another visit to the jazz bar. It's been an awesome birthday, cheers James!