Up La Peña

I had hoped to be posting some pictures of my holiday trip right about now, but, well, read my last post… Instead, I will bring you some photos of Martos I had waiting to be posted. It’s an apt subject, actually, because I’m tired of traveling and it’s nice to be home. (Ok, maybe it’s only temporary, but I really do like it here and I try to follow the motto of “Live where you are.”)

Dominating the skyline of the town, and indeed the nearby countryside, is a mountain named La Peña, which reaches 1,003 meters (about 3,290 feet) in height – and does so rather suddenly, as you can see. At the top are the remains of a Nasrid castle, and you can hike up and visit them. I’ve been up twice since we’ve moved here, and it is well worth the trip.

From the bottom, and even from halfway up (as you can see here), the remains of the castle seem very small. The largest intact part of the ruins is what seems to have been the Keep, the main tower at the very summit.

At the top, though, you realize the castle was actually kind of large. There are walls on three sides, and the fourth is nothing but cliff. It was from up here, and presumably from that fourth side, that the Hermanos Carvajales were thrown to their death. The area inside the ruined walls is probably a little larger than a football field. And to give you a better sense of the size, check out this photo:

This is inside the Keep. The window seat that Dan and Poonam are sitting in is what looks like a really small hole in the photo of the tower above. I’m hanging out in another window on the left, and Dietrich is right there on the edge of the wall.

The views from up there, as you can imagine, are pretty spectacular. In fact… why don’t I give you a little tour of the town from above?

Here’s most of the town.

If we turn a little to the right and zoom in, we can see our apartment building. It’s the one in the center with the blue things on top across from the green roof.

If you look far out on the left towards the edge of the city, you can see the school I work in, Hermanos Carvajales. It’s the one that, well, looks like a school right across from all the olive trees.

And of course, here’s the church on the top of the hill. It’s really a lower section of La Peña, which used to have it’s own sub-castle for the town. There are some walls left, as you can see, as well as a tower (not pictured).

And dead in the center of town, you can see the park where we have the bottelón, situated between the Plaza de Toros – a must for any Andalucian pueblo worth it’s salt (or olive oil, I guess) – and the Municipal Theater.

I’ll leave you with a few more images…