El Refugio and a town called Ronda!

The final stop on my road trip was just outside Ronda in one of the small white towns popular between Granada and Sevilla, called Cartajima (with bus service only 2-3 times a week to the next large town). What makes Ronda special is how it was built on two halves of a mountain, which was split down the middle. So a lot of the buildings are built right on the cliff of one of the halves.

Besides a daytrip to Ronda, Cartajima also offers access to Juzcar, which is Spain’s answer to Morocco’s Chefchouan. So it’s also a “blue town” where all the buildings were painted in smurf blue to market the “Smurf Movie” a few years ago. And hiking between the two towns takes you past “Los Riscos”, which is a huge area full of different rock fomrations of all shapes and sizes. It feels a little like you are on the Planet of the Apes.

I really enjoyed staying in Cartajima at the Refugio, which is the name of the Hostel run by the eccentric Botz, who loves his Music!
And hanging out with him and the other guests and enjoying his great home cooking while sharing our travel stories was definitely a great way to bring this roadtrip to an end and why I like to travel so much.

Cartajima is a beautiful white town…

… with very quiet and clean streets.

The landscape from the top of one of the mountain halves in Ronda.

Here you can see the bridge between the two mountain halves.

Living in a cliffhanger.

Downtown Ronda

And this is a small friend we met on our way.

Juzcar, the Smurf town… unfortunately a little too early in the day.

It used to be one of the white towns scattered all over this region and hidden between the mountains.

The sun starts to slowly light up the town.

Juzcar, the world’s first smurf town.

Los Riscos

You can spend a lot of time here just chilling on different rocks and enjoying the landscape.

This one kind of looks like Mount Rushmore before it had faces.

On the way back to Valencia, I also decided to take a few breaks like this guy.

I managed to stop at two different UNESCO World Heritage sites (Ubeda & Baeza)

The red marks on the walls represent students who have finished their PhDs here.

They used to use normal paint until the government started to clean the walls, so they switched to bull’s blood, because it’s not easy to remove as you can see!