A trip to 'El Torcal'

Last September, I was attending to a photography exposition when I saw for first time pictures of 'El Torcal'. I asked the presenter about such beautiful and original landscape depicted in his snapshots. He replied me that he could not believe that I did not know anything about it. He explained that it was a natural park very close to Antequera (Málaga).

Hence, I found a perfect excuse to travel again. I delayed my trip a few months. Finally, last February I found time to arrange it with my girlfriend. We booked a hotel in Antequera that can be reached from El Torcal in 20 minutes by car.

I drove directly to the park from Sevilla. The trip was pleasant. When we were reaching Antequera, I noticed how the altitude was increasing. The temperature was only 4 degrees on top that day. We were a bit scared because we were not taking gloves and proper equipment with us. Finally, we reached our destination. A bus took us to the El Torcal visitor center on the top of a mountain. The views were amazing.

After getting a map with the possible paths that we could follow in the park, we started trekking. The landscape is very peculiar there. It is the result of a marine region that emerged above the many years ago. During this time, it has been modeled by the erosion of the rain, and the wind, resulting in a very peculiar rocky landscape.  There are two main routes that you can follow within the park. One takes only 30 minutes. And the other one, it takes about two hours. We took the second one.

Although that at the beginning the weather conditions were not good, and we thought about coming back, the temperature increased at noon. We started then feeling better and optimistic to complete our route. We took multiple pictures on our way. We also made a picnic. Finally, we arrived again to the visitor centre three hours later.

We had coffee there and we headed to Antequera. The city itself it is really beautiful and it deserves to be visit. There is a castle, a few dolmens, and nice places to eat out. I have to say that it was a nice surprise. We spent one night there.

The next day in our way back to Seville, we visited Osuna. I can recommend going to this city too. It has nice monasteries and a beautiful castle. From the top of the castle, we could enjoy the stunning views of the countryside. Finally, we reached Seville in the afternoon. Definitely it is a trip that I can recommend and it is easy to organize is your depart from Seville.