El Torcal, Antequera & The Dolmens, Spain

What a super-cool day today. We spent a great day exploring Spain.  Our original plan was to drive to Alora.  I had screwed up and had us drive to Mijas Pueblo when I thought it was taking us to a town that we had not yet explored. Thank goodness I screwed up or listened to terrible bloggers with bad information because we then went to the Information Center in Mijas Pueblo to get help.   There was a lady working there who gave us more information on Alora and we decided we really did not want to go there.  My bad, but she suggested Antequera and El Torcal.  She gave us maps and sent us on our way.  Antequera is only about 50 minutes away from our home base.

The Castle of Antequera is to the left and the 'Lover's Rock' is to the right.

Antequera is a medieval town that dates back to Prehistoric times.  It is a beautiful town!  The lady told us that Netflix does a lot of filming in Antequara because of all the medieval walls and buildings.

We first went to El Torcal which is a National Park of peculiarly shaped rocks that used to be an extensive sea floor of shells, skeletons and marine life during the Jurassic period about 200 million years ago.  (The rocks made me feel young.)  "This sea floor was compressed, deformed and fractured, until they emerged in a slow and continuous process that is still taking place today.  After their emergence, the slow continuous action of rainwater, snow and wind has caused the erosion and dissolution of the limestone rocks, generating this particular landform known as a karst landscape."  

You can see a small town with white-washed walls which is common to this area of Spain.  This town looks way up to the National Park of El Torcal.

There are various hikes to take and we chose the 45-minute rocky path.   We took many photos as we scrambled over rocks to make our way down the path.  We were running out of time so we turned back after 15 minutes in.  It is a really cool place if you are into peculiar humungous rock formations.  The bonus was that this National Park is free.

Mountain Goat in the National Park

Views of the valley below were gorgeous.

These rock formations were my favourite because they looked like a stack of pancakes.

From El Torcal we turned back to the main road and 15 minutes later we were in beautiful Antequera.  

This shot is taken from the road up above Antequera which includes the Old Town, the Castle and Lover's Rock.

There are many narrow one-way roads through the old medieval part of town. It was a bit of a quagmire to drive through but you do get to see the amazing little streets and the old buildings.

Antequera had beautiful patterns in its stoned streets.

The Old Town of Antequera was tightly packed in like all medieval towns but this adds to the beauty and quaintness.

We eventually found Rock Star parking at the far base of the Santa Maria Church. We parked in Plaza del Carmen and walked upstairs and through arches and tunnels to get to the Church that dates back to the 1500s.  We lucked out and hit a free day in Antequara. All of the entrances were free!

Santa Maria La Mayor's Collegiate Church is seen in the distance and at the base of the Palace walls.

This was a vestibule into a person's house and I thought that it was worth a picture.

We parked right here in Plaza del Carmen

I had to include this shot because as I was taking it a hornet or bee flew into my shot and I did not know it until later when I was looking at all my photos.

We made our way to the Castle walls and picked up a handheld audio that you just placed up to your ear. These were 2 euros. This is the only thing that we paid for this entire day.  

Making our way up to the church through the first arch.

Then we went under this little tunnel of sorts.  This is Moorish architecture with a passageway underneath a section of a house.  You can see the ancient timbers on the roof of the tunnel.

We had to progress up one set of stairs.

We took in the sites of Lover's Rock in the background and the beautiful city before us with its terracotta clay roof tiles.

And then up some more stairs until we took in the beauty of the Church.

I have been in many European Christian churches but these ceilings were very peculiar but pretty.

The Church was very pretty with some unusual ceilings.

The Alcazaba or fortress was built over top of Roman ruins that date back to before Christ.  In the 1300s its walls date back to the 1200s. The Nasrids or Muslim Moors built the original Alcazaba. Then the Christians laid Seige back and forth and eventually took over and remodeled the castle to their liking adding the Bell Tower in 1582.

Up at the Bell Tower listening to our devices for information on the history.

On the way up to the Bell Tower.

Castle walls and Tower.

This is a Moorish design that we found in all of the Alcazabas in Spain.

The views from the Bell Tower were fabulous and all views from the castle were great because the castle is up on the hill.

There is so much to see in Antequera that we would need another day to explore.  We were running out of time so we had to cut it short and make our way back to our car.  If you don't like driving on the roads that can be quite tricky to maneuver we always tried to drive back to home base in the light.

One of the pretty Christian gates out of the old town of Antequera.

Orange trees are everywhere in the Costa del Sol area of Spain and the castle was a pretty backdrop for this tree.

Remains of the Roman Baths dating to the 1st century BCE.  There is an intact mosaic floor underneath that plexiglass for the preservation of that 2000+-year-old floor.

Looking out Giant's Arch to the town below

Hercules used to stand at the top of the arch but he now resides in the museum.

We proceeded to the Los Dolmenes which date back to 3400 BCE.  These archeological wonders are in the new part of Antequera so you don't have to drive far to take in these amazing structures.  When the Romans first founded this town they called it Antikaria which meant The Ancient City.  They recognized that they were not the first founders but the ancients were.  The Dolmens or ancient burial mounds are the largest in Europe and are quite mind-blowing, stupendous and surreal structures ( I can not think of enough adjectives to describe these structures)  How they built them is theorized but perhaps aliens had some part to play??

This is the mouth or entrance to one of the Dolmens and some of these megalithic stones weigh up to 180 tons.  This is Menga Dolmen and it is oriented towards Lovers Rock and not by accident.

Inside the Dolmen looking out towards Lovers Rock in the distance.

Walking up to the Menga Dolmen.

Taken from the side you can see the earth mound of Menga Dolmen.

On this site, there are two dolmens.  The third is a few kilometres away.  This picture is taken walking up to Viera Dolmen's entrance.

Right at the entrance, you can see how huge these megalithic rocks are.

Looking inside the burial area where human bones, bronze jewelry and pottery were found.  This leads me to believe that the Romans and others left the burial sites intact out of respect for the ancients.

Looking out from inside Viera Dolmen.

I will definitely return to beautiful Antequera Spain and continue to explore this extremely interesting medieval town.