guadix - home of the cave people

Aside from a farm I visited outside León, Guadix is the least touristed place I have been in Spain. Let’s Go is right, get off at the first stop in the center of town rather than the bus station to save yourself a walk. There is a tourist office on Av. Marinada Pineda near the Cathedral, but it’s not marked. The map they give you is good but you need to ask for directions to the bus station because it’s not on the map. The town doesn’t seem to put any effort into cleaning up the neighborhood that is the main tourist attraction, the barriada cueva. There are 1380 cave-houses built into the rock. Some are really nice caves with elaborate facades, driveways and gardens, others have wooden doors and a padlock and look like they would be housing terrorists, others are abandoned. They run the gamut just like normal houses. There is a cave museum (a former inhabited house), a couple of living caves you can enter, and a cave church. According to the museum curator-ess, the repopulating Christians of the reconquista forced the Muslims out of the center and they went to live in the natural caves in the surrounding area and started carving out elaborate homes which later became popular with the Christians. Nearby the museum at the top of the Barriada Cueva is the Mirador Cerro de Bala, a high point from which you can see the whole town ringed by rock hills (the whole valley used to be a lake thousands of years ago) with the sierras as a backdrop. Dramatic. It was also a good lesson in planning. Guadix is a perfect day trip, one hour bus ride, from Granada. However if you get there at 1130 and plan on taking the 1630 bus home, you really only have an hour and a half to see the sights. The cathedral and museum close at 1300 and 1400. The town totally shuts down in the middle of the day and reopens at 5 or 6pm. This is true in Sevilla, but it’s much more dramatic in a smaller, less cosmopolitan place. The same curator-ess gave us an ample list of her favorite bars. We hit Calatrava on C. La Tribuna where our illiterate server brought us delicious tapas. Don’t point to the menu to order.