The wonders of the human body

On Friday afternoon David asked me if some of the girls and I would like to go on a bike ride in the Cazorla Natural Park with he and Karin (another student at our school from Germany.)  I reluctantly said yes remembering the 10 mile death hike he took us on in that same park last year, but then thought to myself that if we were to go the same route on bike it would be really nice because it was flat most of the time.  Plus, I figured it couldn’t hurt to get some decent exercise.

We arrived at a campsite just outside of Cazorla and rented some bikes.  The owner of the establishment, a very tall man from Holland with huge hands, asked me whether I wanted a helmet.  I figured we wouldn’t be riding in much traffic and that the terrain was pretty mild so I declined.  Then he warned me that I (implying that unlike the other gender of our species) only have one head.  I laughed and accepted the helmet.

After stopping for coffee in Cazorla, we took the Frugoneta up to a nice overlook to start from because David said that the hill was too steep to ride up.  He told us that we would be riding about 6-8 miles to a place in the park where about 70 Griffon (Gyps fulvus), the largest specie of vulchure live.  He said there were a couple very gentle hills to climb and then the majoriy was more or less flat.  David tends to sugarcoat the truth.


View from the overlook.  Right in the middle as far out as you can see, there is a white smudge across the top of the land.  That's Úbeda.


Contemplating the view from the overlook.


The beginning: big smiles and lots of energy.


There are two castles in this shot, one at the top of the hill, and one just at the base, both overlooking Cazorla.

We didn’t realize it until we were coming back the same way, but the majority of the first half of the trip was uphill.  They weren’t steep hills, just really really long ones.  If we had some momentum, Kate and I could make it about halfway up most of them before we had to walk... providing the chains didn’t fall off our high quality mountain bikes while switching gears.


The top of the first "gentle incline."


I appear to be sweating profusely in this photo.  That was just the beginning.

About halfway to our destination, around the third time David said, “We’re almost there” and I stopped believing him, we caught site of some huge vulchures - they were circling over us.   Apparently this birds can stand almost as tall as me and have a wingspan of up to 8.5 feet!  Finally we arrived to where we were going, and much to Kate’s dismay we were only half done with the trip (she thought, “We’re almost there” = “We’re almost done”.)  We parked the bikes at a rocky cliff on the edge of the world, overlooking a deep ravine and facing a steep cliff with shallow caves where these giant birds live.  We saw several of them flying very close and I was astounded at how truly enormous they are.


The rocky terrain leading up to the cliffs.


Across the ravine from us you can see the shallow holes in the cliffside where the Griffon live.


Dangerously close to the edge.


Lunch with the vulchers.  From top to bottom: Kate, David and Karin.

We had lunch and after about an hour decided to start back.  As soon as we got on our bikes we realized the return was going to be especially brutal because we were all suffering from what David referred to as “culo roto” - literally, “broken ass.”  The first mile or so was a steep uphill climb so Kate and I walked most of the way.  Once we got to the top and began our descent,  amazed at the fact that it was a fairly steep downhill ride the whole way.  Kate and I kept asking, “How the hell did we do this in the other direction?”  At this point it was in no way rewarding, however, because the pain of going uphill and downhill were about the same.  If you were pedalling you were putting all your weight on your butt to do so.  If you were coasting downhill it became a fight to distribute the pain between different parts of your body - either you were sitting all the way down on your culo roto or trying to distribute the weight between that and your tired legs.  Plus, the descent was dangerously rocky so we had to ride the breaks all the way down, resulting in painfully cramped hands and jarred wrists.  You had to slouch to take some of the impact off your wrists and still have control over the breaks so now our backs and shoulders are sore too.

When we arrived back at the overlook where we started David said, “I have a little confession to make - we just rode 20 miles.”  Somehow we all just laughed, astonished at what our bodies had just endured, when we probably should have just thrown him over the cliff right then.  Despite how killer the trip was we ended up having a great time, seeing some beautiful sights, and at the end were rewarded with some very tasty ice cream.


We were greeted by a flock of goats when we returned to the overlook.


The end:  Just slightly exhausted.

In other news, this week I took an exam and passed it with flying colors.  I also gave a 30 minute presentation on Arabic music which I think was way more interesting to me than it was to my teacher.  That’s about it for now.  Thanks for reading my blog!  By the way, if you want to leave a comment, please sign your name at the end, otherwise I don’t know who it’s from.