19 July 2011 Laguna Cura

The only Laguna we found

Laguna Cura is an obscure little lake that is hard to find. In the book it is called Cura, on the map it is called Cabrero, and on the ground well! More about that later. The laguna is on the northern side of Caballo and the best access point we could find was from Fuente Fria, some 13km above Nigúelas. The road is not in the best condition and we bounced about for an hour in the car before finally arriving at our starting point, an abandoned house in a superb position. There is quite a community around here of Cortijos, but I would hate to think I was driving that road on a regular basis.
There are no footpaths marked on the map but it did show up an acequia heading in the right direction. Acequia are always good to follow, there is always a good path by the side of them for maintenance and they are never steep, they just have a gentle drop, falling a few metres every hundred metres or so. We picked up the acequia and set of on a good track, but we soon ran into trouble. The path had became overgrown with nettles and spiky bushes, all intent on inflicting damage on our unprotected legs. Mike was the sensible one, he was wearing long trousers. The rest of us, true mountain men, were wearing shorts. Eventually with our legs torn to shreds we abandoned the path when we found a dirt road heading in the right direction. When this petered out we rejoined the acequia, which had now turned into a superb way into the mountains high up above the upper reaches of the Rio Durcal.
As the track approached the area where we expected to find the Laguna it crossed some open pasture land where a lot of mountain cattle had collected. The first lot ignored us, preferring to carry on munching some very green grass. The second lot, close to where we wanted to be, were not quite so friendly, turning towards us and shouting to their mates to come along and have some fun. The odds were in thier favour at about 15:1. We decided to beat an hasty retreat around the side of hill, have a spot of lunch, and work out some tactics for finding the laguna. We had not had more than a couple of bites of our sandwiches when they reappeared with reinforcements, they were obviously looking for a bit of practice before they went into the bull ring. Once more we retreated further up the hillside. They seemed happy with this and left us alone while we finished off our lunch.
There did not appear to be any way to get to the Laguna without incurring their wrath, so we decided to call it a day and make our way home. We again followed the acequia back the way we had come, stopping off to let Kees cool his ankle down in the chilly water. We had only just got going again when I decided to re-enact my favorite party trick, I stumbled on a rock and fell into the acequia, fortunately I did not need a complete change of cloths like the last time and I soon dried off.
Whilst we did not achieve our objective of finding the Laguna we did explore some fabulous countryside, and there was the prospect of beer and tapas in Migúels bar to look forward to when we returned to Nigúelas.
Migúel was closed when we got back and we ended up with beer and crisps served by a right miserly guts at another bar.                                  
On the walk Mike, Kees, Ray, and myself.
Distance covered 18.1 km, height climbed 713 metres, maximum altitude 2523 metres.