The
next day, we left for the Serranìa de Cuenca, a stretch of mountains and
green-moss rivers and pine forests. We made our way to the café at the
top of the mountain near Ciudad Encantada. We ate tapas: Manchego cheese
and olives and a tuna and tomato sauce for the bread.
We
drank beers and then entered the Ciudad Encantada - a regional park of
river-washed stones in the shapes of mushrooms and bears and silly things.
I told Susie that the wonder of this place compared to the bizarreness
of Southern Utah. Hot springs and caves, and corridors and fissures. It
is much like an ancient city, although the blocks of giant limestone here
come from the erosion of millenia.
We
left from the Ciudad Encantada to the walled city of Cuenca, an eighth
century Muslim fortress built on a geological 'island' between two green
rivers which fork into each other. Necessity crowded the city out to the
brink of its walled-cliffs, so that the houses and apartments hang over
its vegetated cliffs.
Cuenca
is like few other cities in the world. It blends into its mountainous
backdrop; it is aesthetic perfection; a beautiful city with a cathedral
lit in yellow, and rows of tapas bars. During the Christian age, medieval
buildings were built around and in between the mujedar architechture,
which made a good place to eat tapas:sausages and lomo, and olives too,
and Manchego cheese.
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