Antequera is now attracting increasing amounts of attention from tourists and property investors. Close to
countryside, this ancient town, filled with renaissance and medieval churches
and convents is a joy to explore. This was
my second visit and I wanted to check out the megalithic necropolis on the edge
of town. Sounds like a bundle of laughs doesn’t it! Well, Rafa is kind enough to indulge my little "geography and
history trip" tendencies. There is a
modernist visitor centre being built and the large earth mounds and their
mysterious stone borrows are being restored. It’s good to see that the Junta de Andalucia can see that there is value
in the tourism to Antequera and historical sites. Since it was Dia de
Andalucia, local school kids had volunteered to offer guide tours of the sites.
We had the pleasure of being showed the ancient megalithic chambers by two
young teenage girls, wearing the latest in Andalucian teen-culture fashion –
leggings, tight knitwear and those weird boots covered in fake fur! Not quite the blue rinse ladies with twin sets and pearls one finds at National Trust proerties in the UK! After getting a glimpse of life (or more a case of death)
6,500 years ago, we went to enjoy some tapas in town. It was unseasonably – too
warm to sit out in the sun of the street café, so we sought refuge in the dark
and smoky interior of the bar where we spotted a bunch of Andalucian toreros surrounded by admirers.
After lunch we climbed by car to the top of El Torcal, the
amazing limestone outcrops that dominate the area. Supposedly they were once the
sea floor, and now they are continually being pushed up from the surface of the
earth and wind and rain shapes them into strange forms, like those fake fibre
glass mountains you find in theme parks The views are
great – right down to the coast and around in all directions.
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