Trujillo

Manuel drove us over to see Trujillo (a nearby town) for a morning. We stopped on the highway to Trujillo and hiked up a hill to get a photo of it. There were also stone walls–like you sometimes see in images of the countryside in the United Kingdom–running all over the land around Trujillo. The kind of stone walls where people have laboriously stacked one small rock on top of another without mortar. I don’t know how old they are, but they follow the old roads and fence in pieces of land. It is amazing that they are still standing.

Trujillo can be seen from a distance

Puck climbed down to take a photo of one of the stone fences.

In Trujillo, like Cáceres, you can see some of the influence of the “New World.” Pizarro was from Trujillo, and there is a museum to him that talks about the conquering of the Incan empire. His family earned the title Marquis of the Conquest and built a palace on the main plaza where there is now a statue to Pizarro (made by an American). We sat in the plaza and had some coffee while enjoying the day. In some of the photos if you look carefully you may also see stork’s nests. As the stork is a protected animal, the city does not remove their nests.

The statue of Pizarro is in the Plaza Mayor.

We walked up to the castle and took in its commanding view of the surrounding lands.

The castle of Trujillo was large and looked very solid.

A view of the side of the castle.

Manuel and the back of the castle. This side was the least fortified because the land dropped away behind the castle.

The view from the castle down into the city.

This view from the castle shows the land nearby and a solar array.

There were houses that were falling apart in the area, but there were also ones that people had fixed up and where they lived. It made for an interesting mixture of old and new, ruins and homes.

One of the streets in the old quarter of Trujillo

One of Trujillo's churches with no roof.

A moment together in the church

The main plaza in Trujillo. Many cities in Spain have a main plaza where vendors used to have their designated areas to sell things and also where many community events took place. Trujillo’s is a lot more open, and several of the palaces have their coat of arms (and sometimes a balcony) on the corner facing the plaza instead of over their main door which was on a side street.

This wider view of the plaza shows that it is a very open space.

Another view of the plaza.

Another morning, we went hiking on landcovered in boulders that used to be owned by a German artist named Ben Vautier. It was outside the town of Barruecos.

It was a gorgeous day with lovely rocks and clouds. Can you see the rock turtle heading for land?

If you look carefully, you can see a big, white cement square on the left side of this photo. The cement block has a car stuck in it halfway--it's part of Vautier's artwork. It was a gorgeous day for hiking.

The weekend was an amazing experience, and we enjoyed our time with Chus and Manuel and the daily walks with Lula–getting to see her run and play with neighborhood dogs.