River trekking adventures

It's that time of year where hot summer temperatures send people in search of ways to cool off and be refreshed. For many people, that means flocking to the beaches that Spain is so famous for. For others, seeking to avoid the tourist trap, it means finding lakes and rivers where you can go for a quick dip.

There are lots of rivers in southern Spain and they're just beautiful in winter when they're being constantly fed by snow and rain. In summer, however, almost all of our rivers are completely dry. (See the blog post before this one for an explanation of that.) If you want to find a river that still has water in it, you need to head to a place where the mountains are pretty close to the sea and the river is therefore quite close to its source.

I'm not much of a beach person, and I don't have access to a swimming pool, so in summer I try to make room for a day every week where I can go on a "wild swimming" outing to a nearby lake or river. This month I've enjoyed two river adventures in the sierras that are so close to the Costa del Sol.

Last week I took Nelson with me, and we drove eastwards along the coast to the little town of Nerja and the Río Chillar. Over a decade of living in Spain, I'd heard a lot of talk about the famous Chillar River Walk, where you walk all the way up the river, in ankle deep or calf deep water, traversing narrow canyons and encountering numerous little waterfalls as the river tumbles its way down from the Sierra Tejeda. I'd always assumed that this was a walk I wouldn't be able to do - because of the challenges I have with arthritis... but a dog-walking friend had been telling me about it recently and so I decided just to go and check it out, even if I was only able to do a small part of the route.

It turned out to be one of the most fun things I've done since livng in Spain. Because the river is meandering through deep gorges, there was no climbing involved to put strain on my lungs... and because you're walking in cold water, you don't get sore or sweaty feet. The landscape was stunningly beautiful and Nelson was the perfect dog for the adventure: he never got tired of running and splashing around in the water as we made our way up the river to the pools and waterfalls at the top. This was definitely an adventure not to be missed, and I'm glad I plucked up the courage to do it.

For this week's adventure, we headed westwards, to the Sierra de las Nieves and the Río Verde. It's not as well known as the Chillar, and it's deeper in most places, but you can still walk upriver in the water if you want to. However, it's not for nothing that it's called the Río Verde (the Green River.) I'd been warned that the stones of the river bed can be quite slippery with moss and algae, and I decided I wasn't going to risk any sprained ankle with outreach season just around the corner.

Where I really wanted to go, though, was a beautiful spot at the top of the river, called the Charco del Canalón, where water tumbles from the mountain into a deep pond. In fact, there are several pools at that top part of the river; some are quite shallow and others, where the river passes through a rocky channel, are as much as a couple of metres deep.

We'd been there last summer, but without any canine companions in tow. This year, I took Buba and Nelson with me for the day trip. They thoroughly enjoyed the walk through the forest and, as you can see in the video, they spent a whole hour splashing and swimming in the pools of the river. (I swam too, but I'm not in the video.) Then, we hiked back to the car again and drove down the mountain a little bit to the town of Istán, where we took another walk along the irrigation channels that come from the source of another river, the Río Molinos.

All in all, we had two very enjoyable days of river adventures.

For next week, I'm hoping it might be possible for us to head to the Guadalmina River Canyon, a spot where you actually have to swim for much of the short route between the high rocky walls. I saw it last year when I was driving back from Gibraltar, but I was alone and didn't have the right gear with me for the descent. (You need to carry your towel and clothes/shoes in a waterproof bag, so that you can get dressed again when you reach the other end.) I haven't yet found others who'd be willing or available to go there next week (some of my friends already did it fairly recently) so I'm still asking around. It would be a fitting third episode to our river adventures this summer.