Monfrague and Caceres

Monfrague

We took off early today to drive north to La Vera for a walk.  La Vera is a beautiful area with small historic villages near the Sierra de Gredos.  Many of the villages had de la Vera added to their name, meaning of the Vera.  Just as we arrived at the trail head it began to pour rain so we had to abandon the walk and move on to plan B.  It is always necessary to have alternate plans when travelling.  We stopped at one of the small towns and had the usual in a nice little bar which was full of locals escaping the rain.

We drove back a bit to the south to Monfrague National Park, which is known as the home of more birds of prey than anywhere else in Europe.  Even impatient people who race around while travelling can spot birds of prey, this was the place for us.

The area is quite beautiful, the rivers Tietar and Tajo meet in this park, there are also some interesting small hills.  We went on a nice little 7.5 km walk which brought us to a birding lookout known as Cerro Gimio, which we had to ourselves until a few Spanish people came up, so we left the lookout for them, and walked back to the parking lot.

As we were driving down the highway, I started gaping at some nice rock formations along the river and told John we needed to stop and hopefully there was a pull-out to do so.  There was a viewing area along the highway with a few cars parked.  What a surprise we got when we left the car, looked up and saw a flock of birds of prey soaring against the backdrop of an extraordinarily blue sky.  It was one of those moments, absolutely stunning and something to behold.  I just stood there and gawked while John took photos.

After we were quite well satisfied with our ‘birding’ experience for the day, we decided we could jam in another destination and drove on to the historic city of Caceres.

Caceres

We parked quite a long way from the walls of the old city and walked to the Plaza Mayor where our walk began.  We were lagging a bit so we re-fuelled with a café con leche outside on the plaza.  Caceres has a tremendous ancient area inside old city walls.  What is most fascinating, are the small plazas that practically link together between medieval buildings, it is a 16th century city.

Our walk was rather rushed as it got cold and windy, it looked like we were going to get a thunderstorm, luckily the storm just missed Caceres.  We pretty much raced around the narrow streets and small plazas looking at all the buildings.  We then walked back to the car, which we found easily as John had the brainwave recently, to pinpoint the location of the car on a handheld GPS, so we can find our way back.