10.19.22 Ronda, Nerja, and Mijas

toddvandy
Oct 19, 2022
3 min read

Ronda and its famous gorge. A picturesque Spanish town with a rich and storied past.

We hiked down the gorge and saw someone repelling down the waterfall. And spent a nice afternoon walking the town and seeing the history and views.

We toured the bullring and museum. They claim it is the first building constructed solely for bullfighting in the world. The animated movie "Ferdinand" was set in this town.

The area where the bulls are drawn by lots and systematically corralled into the pens

which are all controlled by pulleys from above.

Before bulls, this was established as the first horse riding and calvary school in Spain (the 2nd in Europe) in the 1500's to protect/equip the "Christian" nobility to fight the Arabs who had been occupying much of southern Spain for hundreds of years. It remains an active horse breeding and training facility. Very proud of their horses.

Pure bred Spanish horses were (are?) the most sought after in the world. To the left is a painting (in Rijksmuseum) by Adam Frans van der meulen of Louis XIV on a horse presumed to have come from here. It was fun to see our name.

The audio tour was very popular with the boys. We discovered a way for them to not be bored in museums! Here Drion is pointing to a drawing of the only torero to have died here. In Spain, it seems bull rings are common while bullfights are not. The boys want

to see one but may not have the chance.

Our favorite local beach in Benalmadena. And an English restaurant after swimming.

2 orders was more than enough!

Nerja is a coastal town about an hour drive to the east. There's a big, famous cave there so we went. Because we like caves and this place was cool.

The first main room is so vast it regularly hosts concerts and ballet performances.

Difficult to understand the depth here.

Center of photo there is a walkway railing with people walking.

Formed over 5 million years and counting, it was "discovered" in 1959 by some boys exploring around. They soon found themselves knee-deep in bat guano, crunching human bones underfoot. Other than cave hyenas?!? humans have occupied these 5km of caverns for at least 25,000 years.

Behold, the largest known stalactite in the world.

Amazing limestone formations. Some of the very large, long limestone "fins" looked like organ pipes and sounded like notes of a different instrument when gently plucked.

The cave is famous for it's prehistoric paintings from paleolithic times. It is even believed that some are the oldest known from 43,000 years ago by neanderthals.

Most of it was off limits to tourists and none of it was illuminated because of algae growth. However they did say there were black and red cave paintings to see, they just weren't allowed to tell us where to look as flash is not allowed. Perhaps you can pick out paleolithic drawings and paintings in these photos from the darker areas.

Back out of the cave, we proceeded to a beach lunch and then discovered our new favorite beach. Too bad it's an hour away. But the water was gorgeous and climbing and jumping off the rocks was fun.