More river adventures...

Back on July 19th (see earlier in this blog) I wrote about two of our river adventures during the early part of July.  One week, we headed east and I went river trekking in the Río Chillar, taking Nelson with me, as he's the most athletic of the four dogs. For our outing day the following week, I took Nelson and Buba and we headed westwards, to the Río Verde, where we were able to swim at one of my favourite spots, the Charco del Canalón.

For our third river adventure, last week, we headed north, high into the. Snowy Mountains (Sierra de las Nieves) to the Río Turón. Because it's so high up in the mountains, the Turón has water all year round, so there are lots of little pools along the way and there are several deeper swimming spots where "diques" - old stone dams - have been built along the course of the river in the past.

This time I took three of the dogs with me (Bonnie the chihuahua came too) and we all had a refreshing swim in the cool mountain waters of the river.  The original plan was to walk to two or more of the dams, but the other dog owners advised that there wouldn't be enough shade along the way, so we went to a more forested area and had a walk along the shallows of the river instead. The dogs had fun, as you can see in the video.

Our very last river adventure of July was today and was probably the most "adventurous" of all. Although it was a shorter route than most of the others, it involved a level of canyoning that meant you had to clamber over enormous rocks and swim along some stretches of the river where it was too deep to walk. For this reason, Nelson was my only canine companion again for that trip today.

Although it was a little more challenging than I'd expected, it was stunning - a once in a lifetime experience. Some parts of it were so deep in the canyon that they were like caves or tunnels made of rock; sometimes there were tiny waterfalls trickling down on top of you as you swam. There were unusual shapes and patterns in the rocks, almost like stalactites in places.

On the advice of people who'd been there before, we parked at the bottom end of the canyon and, instead of walking up the main road to the town of Benahavís, we crossed the wooden footbridge and made our way up the canyon by walking in some "acequias" - irrigation channels that run parallel to the river, but high up above it. 

Once we reached the little town, we made our way to the Charco de las Mozas, a famous pool where people jump from very high rocks into very deep water. That's the starting point for the descent of the river, and from that point onwards we were climbing, walking and swimming for the next two hours, until we came to the end of the canyon and the river was edged by kind of a stony beach, where families had already gathered for a day of swimming and picnicking.

After we'd eaten our sandwich and changed out of our wet clothes and shoes, we did a short hike that had been mapped out and signposted by the town council. This one also followed the path of acequias, but the town had conveniently installed metal walkways on top of them at points where there was no room to walk next to them. So we didn't need to do any more walking in water; it was all very pleasant and "civilised."

I joke about our super-chihuahua, Bonnie, but Nelson is the real super hero. He coped admirably today with our canyoning triathlon (climbing, walking and swimming) and even needed to do a bit of abseiling when a man helped him down a particularly high part near the end. (I'm told that there used to be a knotted rope there to help canyoners in the past, but it's long gone and so you had to fling yourself down a two metre rock slide, right in the path of a cascading waterfall. Nelson was a bit reluctant to hurl himself into the void and so someone kindly helped him down.)  He went wild with joy when we reached the end of the route and a Belgian family was there with a dog about his size. The two of them splashed around for ages. But no sooner did we have our feet on dry ground than Nelson was ready for action again; he seemed to thoroughly enjoy the hiking trail and one final dip in the river. 

It's been so much fun to take one or more dogs with me on these river trips during July. As I don't particularly "go on holiday" in summer like many people do, one of my goals for my pre-outreach months this year was to set aside one day every week for something touristy or fun - visiting a new town in the region or embarking on a new experience, like these four river trips with the dogs. It's been thoroughly enjoyable.