From the source to the sea...

I've always been a big fan of the natural beauty of waterfalls - whether it's huge falls like Niagara Falls in Canada and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, or whether it's just smaller falls like the ones we saw on our trip to Barranco Blanco this month. The first time I went to South Africa in 1993, we clambered our way to at least half a dozen waterfalls, and another half dozen when we had our first Zimbabwe outreach in 1995.

Andalucía, this southernmost part of Spain, has a plentiful supply of waterfalls and so I've made sort of a "bucket list" of ones that are fairly near by and could be visited this summer. Today was our first trip and it was to the Fuente de los 100 Caños (Fountain of a Hundred Pipes), the source of the Guadalhorce River. 

It's not strictly a waterfall in the usual sense of the word, although I guess that at some point the snowmelt bursting out of the mountain probably did cause a small cascade. Back in the 1980s, someone had the idea of creating a monument to mark the spot of the river's source, and so they built a fountain that channelled the natural spring of water through a hundred pipes. (Nowadays there are actually 101 pipes!)

From there, the river begins meandering through farmlands and olive groves as it makes its way down to the sea. I've often walked the last few kilometres of the Guadalhorce, as it reaches the Mediterranean and spills into the sea at our favourite dog beach. So it was kind of fun to walk the first few kilometres of the river's course, listening to the trickling water as we made our way along the shady river bank, close to sun scorched olive groves.

It's close to the little town of Villanueva del Trabuco and as we drove through the town, we noticed it was market day, same as back home in Alhaurín. So we took some time to wander around the market and explore the town a bit.

From there we drove on to the next, even smaller village of Villanueva del Rosario, and went to check out some of the unusual mountain scenery at the Hondonero area, just above the village. We passed near another river's source - the start of a stream called the Chorro, which is one of the tributaries of the Guadalhorce, and then we drove higher to a spot with some unusual mountain formations. It was a very enjoyable day.