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Winter Tour 2008 – Day 6: Today we wanted to visit the city of Cuenca and nature to the northeast of it.  While on the map it looked like something close-bye, in reality distances on rural roads are much larger and it took us much longer then predicted to reach Cuenca. Fuel was also getting low, but we were lucky and surprised to find an open gas station in Cuenca on first Christmas day. In fact, most gas stations and also some bakeries were open in the afternoon, something I didn’t expect in catholic Spain on a day like this.

We didn’t stop long in Cuenca and continued following the CM-2105 towards the Ciudad Encantada (Enchanted Forrest) with a coffee break at the Ventano del Diablo close to Salto de Villalba. Unfortunately when we finally arrived at the Ciudad Encantada, it was already too late for the ca. 40-minute hike. The sun was already going down, and according to our car navigation it would take us another 1 ½ hours to get back to the campground.
So in total our first Christmas Day didn’t go at all as expected, because we underestimated time and distances. Here in rural Spain distances are huge and it just takes more time to get from A to B. We did see some pretty landscapes and in the mountains there was still some snow from those snowstorms they had a week before.