Life feels cleaner after a good rain. The dust has settled; the temperature has gone down. When I left Lupe's house in Córdoba on Saturday morning, the city was actually cool. (This is saying something, since it has the highest average summer temperature in Spain and Europe!)
In the middle of the plain, an enormous rock pile suddenly loomed up. To my utter delight, a castle perched precariously atop it. I did not realize just how precarious it seemed until I drove around it.
I found out later it was the Castillo de Belmez, built originally in 1245 and last used by the French when they were attempting to overrun Spain (Napoleon=idiot, remember?).I thought about going to see it, but I had a lot I wanted to do and I needed to be in Sevilla to turn in the car that evening, so I kept going.
I've discovered that there are few things that make me happier than driving through unfamiliar territory without the fear of getting lost.
I could thoroughly enjoy sailing along at 90km/hr. I began passing through fields upon fields of solar panels - small wonder! The sun was beating down and there were few, if any, clouds to be seen.
Once I passed the solar panel fields, I began to go past acres of sunflowers, all pointing toward the sun.In Spanish, the sunflower is called a "girasol". "Girar" means to turn, and "sol" is, of course, the sun. They are sun-turners! It's an apt name.
Of course, I was stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle for most of this, but once I went around it, the sheer emptiness of road stretching out in front of me was simply glorious.
I was driving along happily when in the distance I saw another hill fortress, this time looking like a crown. I determined I was going to go find it.
The road led steadily toward the castle, winding up and up the mountain and right through the small whitewashed town of Reina.
It was a sleepy Saturday morning; the only stirring inhabitants of the town were three women. They looked at me curiously, but without much interest.
My quest for the castle ended rather ingloriously and abruptly. I simply could not find a way to go farther.
As I backed my car back down what turned out to be a sheep track and did a 3-point turn on the side of a mountain with a steep drop no more than a yard behind my back tires, I reflected that this whole situation probably counted against the promise I had made to a friend to "not do anything stupid" while in Spain.
After heading back through the still-sleepy town, I headed off to find the Roman Theater. This detour turned out much better.A bored and sweaty security guy emerged from his air-conditioned trailer only just long enough to not answer my question of how much the theater cost to see and merely tell me it was "that way". He then immediately went back into the trailer. I therefore assumed that it was free.
The path to the theater was lined with fences to keep sheep in. It was an intensely hot day by this time - 11:45 in the morning! I felt like just lying down in the shade like this poor sheep.
A word about this Roman theater: it was completely deserted and remarkably intact. I could climb down the steps, stand on the stage, go "backstage", and explore as much as I liked.
There was a Roman town in the field nearby, and I could see plainly where the foundations of the buildings were. An informative sign told me in good Spanish and Google-translated English that the town had been mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy; that the Emperor Vespasian had been involved in the planning of the city; and that centuries later the hill fortress had been made by the Moors, using Roman stone.
I only spent about half an hour at this fantastic spot, but it was absolutely worth it. It isn't every day that you get to have an entire Roman theater all to yourself. Well, as much as you can have it "all to yourself" when you're sharing the space with about a hundred sheep and one completely uninterested security guy.
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment