Nerja- Parte dos

Hey everybody,

On Friday, the group decided to return to Nerja for the second time, but this time, to see the caves. We got there around noon and ate our lunches our host moms packed us. At the picnic table, there were lots of stray cats and I gave them all some of my tuna sandwich which they gobbled up. After that, we headed down to the caves. At first we had to to down a staircase duck our heads a lot. We walked through a narrow stretch and we were already amazed. Thousands of years of erosion made amazing designs in the cave.

Once we walked through a narrow part, the entire caves opened up into huge "rooms." It was like standing in the middle of a huge concert hall. In fact, in one part of the cave, there are seats for concerts that are held in July. Acoustically, the caves must be amazing. It is difficult to see, but in the picture below, you can see people at the bottom left, showing you just how large the caves are.

The ceiling had thousands of spikes that looked like massive icicles ready to fall at any minute. I would not want to be in there during an earthquake. At one point in the caves, some friends and I all laid down on the floor and stared at the ceiling for 20 minutes. It was really so amazing to just look at.

After about an hour, we left the caves. Here are the rest of the pictures from that. All photo credit goes to Hannah Anderson for these amazing shots.

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After the caves, we decided to hit the beach. But before that, I stopped in the bathroom. It was in the basement of the restaurant, and a bunch of my friends and I went down. When I was going to the bathroom, a hand reached under my stall and grabbed my backpack and pulled it out. Thinking it was one of my friends, I called out for them but I didn't hear a response. Then my backpack was shoved back under the stall, so I assumed my friend just needed tissue or something. When I left the stall, none of my friends were in the bathroom anymore, only several elderly ladies were. I thought to myself "nice, old ladies wouldn't steal from me!" so I washed my hands and left. I discovered the next day when I was looking for my camera when we went to Ronda, that it was gone. I told this to a friend later, and he suggested that I should have stomped on the hand when I saw it. Well, lesson learned.

On our way to the beach, we got very lost. It was all downhill weaving down a path in between farms. We would occasionally run into a dead-end, then turn around and retrace our steps. When we finally reached the beach, it was almost empty and very beautiful. One thing that is very evident here is that women go topless at the beach all the time. We were not sure, but this beach might have been a nude beach because not only did we see a topless woman, but also a completely naked man.

When we left it was quite a hike back up the path and I had to take a break at the end because I was breathing hard. Since we were still near the caves, we needed to go back to the town center of Nerja because the buses back to Malaga ran more frequently. We decided to walk it, which ended up being an hour, but it was nice, leisurely walk. We reached the bus stop early, and decided to get some gelato. After, we hopped on the bus and headed back.

Tomorrow we are going to Ronda, so I will write back soon about that! Hasta luego!